Three days in June
A parentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide to college
By William Bole

p r o l o g ue
parent traps

A

ccording to the best guesses of those who’ve made it
their business to guess, the Age of Parental Anxiety
kicked off sometime between the 1901 final edition of Felix Adler’s The Moral Instruction of Children and
the 1909 conferral of best-seller status on the English translation of The Century of the Child, a work by the Swedish
feminist Ellen Key.
A list of the differences between Adler’s and Key’s views
of child rearing would run about the length of both books
combined. Adler, a rabbi who taught ethics at Columbia
University, wrote a book that hearkened back to early-19thcentury manuals by American clerics and divines, telling his
readers, for example, that “the moral value of the study of
literature is as great as it is obvious. Literature is the medium
through which all that part of our inner life finds expression
which defies scientific formulation.” Key, on the other hand,
her gaze turned toward a bright utopia fueled by principles
of social Darwinism and eugenics, professed a “new ethic,”
by which the only possible “immorality” in family life would
be “that which gives occasion to a weak offspring, and
produces bad conditions for development.” She continued,
“The Ten Commandments on this subject will not be prescribed by the founders of religion, but by scientists.”
It was the faith in science that made Key’s tendentious and oh-so-continental book an American best-seller.
Science was by the 1910s generally regarded by middleclass Americans (our most eager devourers of child-rearing
counsel) as the means by which the new century would
generate solutions to many problems that had perturbed
human beings through the ages. As regarded child-raising,
it was understood that insights into nutrition (mother’s milk
or cow’s?), psychology (punishment vs. reward?), physiology (toilet training at three months or six?), and hygiene
(one bath a week or three?) would free mothers (and fathers
to a lesser degree) from having to intuit responses to children’s needs on the basis of feeling or lean on the primitive
practices that their own benighted ancestors had honored.
Instead, responsible women, working from written instructions, would now develop healthy, bright, and well-adjusted
children as easily as they crocheted fancy lace doilies.
Among the first men (and it’s invariably been men for
more than 100 years) to assert responsibility for turning
American women into professional mothers was Dr. L.E.
Holt. A pioneer pediatrician, Holt produced, among other
works, The Care and Feeding of Children: A Catechism for

the Use of Mothers and Children’s Nurses, which was first
published in 1894 and for succeeding decades held the distinction of being the best-selling medical text in American
history. Holt’s articles of scientific faith relied heavily on
the virtues of regularity, sharp record keeping, and maternal detachment. They ran the gamut from grandma-esque
counsel, such as don’t play with baby just before bedtime, to
instructions not to pick up a crying baby unless it was clear
that the child was in physical pain, and even more harmful
nonsense, as in this creedal statement:
What things in the mother are most likely to cause
colic and indigestion in a nursing infant?
Extreme nervousness, fright, fatigue, grief, or
passion are the root common causes; sometimes
menstruation.
By the mid 1930s authority in these matters had passed
to John Watson, a pioneer behaviorist who had gone into
advertising after being run out of Johns Hopkins for having
an affair with a graduate student.
Watson’s best-selling Psychological Care of Infant and
Child (1928) was a manifesto by a man who boasted that if
handed an infant and time, he could return “a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant [or] beggar and thief”—whatever was
required. His book included a chapter titled “The Dangers
of Too Much Mother Love”—it apparently caused “invalidism”—in which appeared these now notorious instructions:
“Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap.
If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say
goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.” And
while science did offer contrary views, as from Yale’s Dr.
Arnold Gesell, who founded the field of child development
and assured mothers that children were inherently good at
growing up, Watson’s ideas, boosted by his skills at promotion, pretty much held sway until Dr. Benjamin Spock came
along in 1946 with The Common Sense Book of Baby and
Child Care. Spock told mothers that feeding didn’t have to
take place on the hour, that kissing was in fact a constructive
act, and that maternal intuitions were likely sound (though
there were a few things mothers still needed to learn).
According to some records, his book ranked second only to
the Bible in sales through the remainder of the 20th century.
Our story on parents trying to understand how to do the
best for their children begins on page 12.
—ben birnbaum

Contents

boston college magazine

2 Letters
4 Linden
Lane

From “Upward Bound,” pg. 22

F E AT UR E S
14 a parent’s rite of passage
After delivering their freshmen to
orientation, mothers, fathers, and
guardians enjoy a preview of the life
and purposes of the University

Stagehands: How to
build an audience •
News of the world: In the
Heights—as in any local
newspaper—the big stories
of near and far have jockeyed for space • Top dog:
A field report • Close-up:
Stone face

38 C21
Notes

The first last lunch • The
lost humor of Jesus

vol. 72 no. 3 summer 2012

43 End
Notes

Waiting for Yeats •
No place for the undecided • Someone on TV
Uses the Phrase, ‘The
Soul’s Smile’

50 Class
Notes
80 Inquiring
Minds

When the states were in
charge of immigration

81 Works
& Days

YouTube’s Kevin Allocca
’06

By William Bole
Photographs by Lee Pellegrini

22 upward bound
How one high-octane Jesuit and
thousands of ordinary Bostonians moved
Boston College to higher ground
By James O’Toole

By J.M. Berger

on the cover: Parents at a “Challenge of Transition”
panel in Devlin Hall 008 during orientation on June 11.
Photograph by Lee Pellegrini

GET THE FULL STORY, AT BCM ONLINE:

www.bc.edu/bcm

32 early risers
Four young Boston College scientists
are among those honored this year by
the Sloan Foundation

Browse senior theses from the recent past, courtesy
of eScholarship at the University Library (pg. 7)
• Read digitized issues of the Heights going back
to its founding in 1919 (pg. 8) • Watch “Sloan
Rangers,” an audio slideshow profiling the four
Boston College faculty members who were awarded
2012 Sloan fellowships (pg. 32) • View Fr. James
Martin’s Underhill lecture, “Between Heaven and
Mirth” (pg. 40) • Read the original hand-written
manuscript of W.B. Yeats’ first play, Love and Death
(pg. 44) and view Fintan O’Toole’s talk about the
work • reader’s list: Books by alumni, faculty, and
staff • headliners: Alumni in the news

Re “The 100th Revisited” (Spring 2012):
Seth Meehan’s account of the scramble
by Boston College President Michael
P. Walsh, SJ, to get a replacement for
President John F. Kennedy as keynote
speaker at the University’s 1963 centennial celebration was amusing to this reader,
whose current view of Washington is of
a sandbox occupied by political leaders
who act like selfish brats throwing sand at
each other. Washington was not a sandbox in 1963. But it did have woodsheds,
and Walsh’s choice of Massachusetts
Representative Tip O’Neill ’36, P’68,’72,
to persuade Kennedy to accept bore fruit.
Meehan has written a tale of two
great men. One was a young president
who brought inspiration and hope to
our nation. The other was a graduate of
Boston College whose mission would be
to keep Kennedy’s spirit of hope and fairness alive.
Thomas H. Alton ’80
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Grounded

Re “Clubland” by Thomas Cooper and
Tim Czerwienski (Spring 2012): I was
excited to see the picture of student EMTs
preparing their first-response bags, more
specifically their MERET first-response
bags. I’m the founder and owner of that
company and also a Boston College alumnus—with a master’s degree in geophysics. The analytical fundamentals I learned
while I was at Boston College have carried
me outside of my early world of dielectrics, stratigraphy, and three-dimensional
hydrogeophysics.
Scott Decker, MS’00
Santa Ana, California
on revision

Re “Mixed Blessings,” William Bole’s
account of professor Ruth Langer’s
research into treatments of the Jewish
prayer the Birkat HaMinim (Spring 2012):
Prayer connects us to our creator—it is a
time-honored bridge between the human

and the divine. It is steeped in tradition,
and its wording is considered more than
just poetry or convenient expression of
a moment. It is a heavenly inspired text,
which was crafted and codified often
to replace the spontaneous and private
expressions that people of a bygone era
could muster.
Any decision to censor, whether
because of a governmental edict to limit
thought or a self-imposed limitation to
avoid social clashes, has consequences
that go beyond a simple redaction. Jewish
prayer has grown and evolved, but sections that still represent the active concerns of the people, especially people who
constantly have to defend their faith and
belief, should not be subject to any censorship in a free society, or sacrificed on the
altar of political correctness.
Rabbi Daniel Rosen, MA’94
Teaneck, New Jersey
When did Boston College start using the
term “Common Era”? I realize that the
University is no longer the Catholic institution it once was. However, can you at
least use the term “A.D.” in your publications? BC is well named.
George E. Malley, JD’90
West Roxbury, Massachusetts
Editor’s note: On this question, BCM follows
the Chicago Manual of Style, which notes,
“Choice of the era designation depends on
tradition, academic discipline, or personal
preference.” The article “Mixed Blessings”
treats Jewish historical and theological themes,
and therefore the Common Era designation is
appropriate.
Talking points

Re “What Right?” (Spring 2012), William
Bole’s report on the April 18 panel discussion that focused on the federal government’s contraceptive insurance mandate:
The panelists failed utterly by not explicitly rejecting the rhetoric of New York’s
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the bishop
who has decided, without the support of

the American Catholic laity, that contraception constitutes a breaking-point issue.
Catholics have done better historically for
themselves and for pluralistic democracy
when working within the system, and
Dolan’s brand of punditry threatens to
endanger that tradition.
Matthew DeLuca ’11
New York, New York
There should be little doubt that the U.S.
Council of Bishops is carrying out a plan
to discredit the incumbent U.S. president.
Does not this create a church-state conflict? Of course, it does!
Vito Tamboli ’56
Saint Louis, Missouri
Benefits program

Re “Runners’ World” by Tim Czerwienski
(Spring 2012): Thank you for recognizing
the efforts of the Campus School marathon team, a crucial branch of the Campus
School Volunteers. The marathon team is
the largest fundraiser for this undergraduate club, which annually raises more than
$100,000 for the Campus School.
On Marathon day, Campus School
families set up a cheering section at
Boston College’s main gate at Linden
Lane. Campus School marathoners are
recognizable in their yellow marathon
shirts (donated to the team by the Boston
College Bookstore). Hundreds of Campus
School marathoners reach their personal
goal of finishing a marathon. In addition
they create bonds with Campus School
students and become part of a legacy.
Don Ricciato, Director
Sean Schofield, Volunteer Coordinator
Campus School
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
mixed message

Re “Close-up: Holy Makeover!” by
Thomas Christopher (Spring 2012):
Although the general public may think
that the “Immaculate Conception” refers
to the conception of Jesus by the Holy
Spirit, it is distressing to find this misinterpretation in a Boston College publication. Jesus was conceived at the time
of the Annunciation, which the Church
celebrates on March 25. Mary, the daughter of Anne and Joachim, was conceived
naturally but without original sin; we

celebrate this on December 8 (Feast of the
Immaculate Conception). In the picture
of St. Joseph (page 9), the angel Gabriel is
telling him of Mary’s miraculous pregnancy, not her Immaculate Conception.
Rebecca Valette
Professor emeritus
Department of romance languages
Editor’s note: This error was also reported by
Vincent Gallagher ’67.

Events: Celebrating
150 years
October 5 • Education and Its
Role in Democratic Societies
A day of panel discussions
with a keynote address (“What
Community Provides”) by Pedro
Noguera, the Peter L. Agnew

O’Connor remembered

Professor of Education at New

About 10 years ago, I was invited to
contribute to a book of short tributes
titled I Remember My Teacher. Thomas H.
O’Connor ’49, MA’50, H’93, who passed
away May 20 at age 89, came immediately to mind, and I recalled that while he
specialized in teaching “the time between
the revolution and the Civil War, he was
proof that there is no dull period in history. . . . He brought Calhoun, Webster,
Van Buren, Clay all to life. He taught me
that history is not a dull and dusty thing,
but full of life and rich in humor—like
Thomas O’Connor himself.”
Martin Nolan ’61
San Francisco, California

York University. Sponsored by

updates
n In

fall 2010, BCM reported on a project
by assistant professor of English Joseph
Nugent to create an electronic guide to the
Dublin of James Joyce’s Ulysses (“Bloom’s
Way”). With the help of successive
classes of Boston College undergraduates,
Nugent produced an interactive, multimedia guide to both Ulysses and Dubliners that
was launched as an iPhone app on June
14. Called JoyceWays, it contains historical and contemporary photos, video clips,
and maps detailing more than 100 locations along the routes traveled by Leopold
Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Details are
available at www.joyceways.com.
n A 40-foot long replica of a section of
the Berlin Wall that was created in 2009
by fine arts lecturer Mark Cooper and students to mark the 20th anniversary of the
Wall’s demise (“Wall Space,” Fall 2009)
has been re-erected in Northern Ireland as
a peace memorial. Originally installed on
the Dustbowl, the canvas and wood structure was moved to Strabane, a city much
damaged during the Troubles, where local

the Lynch School of Education.
October 10 • Drew Gilpin Faust
An address by the president of
Harvard University. Sponsored
by the sesquicentennial speakers
series.
November 8–9 • Religion and
the Liberal Aims of Higher
Education Two days of panel
discussions featuring college presidents, scholars, and journalists.
For registration information on
these and other events during
the sesquicentennial celebration, visit www.bc.edu/150.

schoolchildren worked with area artists to
add a new layer of art and commentary.
Corrections: In “Identification, Please”
(Spring 2012) the man identified as John
Tebnan in the lower right photo on page 18
was John E. Tevnan ’51, P’88. Our thanks
to Richard Schrader, professor emeritus of
English, for bringing this to our attention.
In Steve Pemberton’s autobiographical
piece “Marian’s Children” (Spring 2012)
the newspaper cited in the caption on page 30
as the New Bedford Times Standard is the
New Bedford Standard Times.
BCM welcomes letters from readers.
Letters may be edited for length and clarity,
and must be signed to be published. Our
fax number is (617) 552–2441; our e-mail
address is bcm@bc.edu.

s um m e r 20 12 v b c m

3

CONTE NT S
6 Stagehands

Linden
Lane

How to build an audience
8 News of the world

In the Heights—as in
big stories from near and
far have jockeyed for space
10 Top dog

A field report
11 Close-up

Stone face

4

bcm v sum me r 2012

Campus digest

any local newspaper—the

In foreign affairs news, nine students were
awarded Benjamin A. Gilman scholarships
to take part in study-abroad programs; 16
students and recent graduates received
Fulbright fellowships, which fund a year
of international post-baccalaureate study;
and three students received scholarships
from the State Department to engage
in intensive language study abroad, the
languages being Persian, Bangla-Bengali,
and Turkish. z The senior class gift set
a record of 1,033 participants, breaking
1,000 for the first time in the University’s
history. VP for Mission and Ministry Jack
Butler, SJ, had agreed to eat an Eagle’s
Deli Challenge Burger (five pounds of
meat, bacon, cheese, and bun) if the Class
of 2012 (they number 2,327) exceeded
1,000 gifts, but escaped his deserved fate
by arguing a narrow technicality: that the
seniors didn’t complete their task until the
designated deadline of May 15 had passed.
z “Ocean by the marsh/The marsh fills
with water, dark/A storm is coming,”
won a haiku award for third-grader Kara
Culgin in the annual science poetry contest for Massachusetts schoolchildren
that’s been directed by emeritus professor
of education George Ladd for 24 years. z
Assistant professor J. Elisenda Grigsby of
the mathematics department has received
a National Science Foundation career
award to further her work in topology.
z The University gave honorary degrees
to Joseph A. Appleyard, SJ, ’53, formerly a
member of the English faculty, director of

the A&S honors program, and founding
vice president of Mission and Ministry;
William V. Campbell, chairman of the
board of Intuit, Inc.; Navyn A. Salem ’94,
founder of Edesia, which manufactures
innovative foods to treat childhood malnutrition; Liz Walker, former television
anchor and founder of the Walker Group,
an international social service agency; and
Bob Woodruff, another former anchor,
whose experience of brain injury, suffered
while covering the Iraq war, led to the
launch of a foundation to serve similarly
afflicted members of the armed forces.
Woodruff gave the Commencement
address. z Terrence Devino, SJ, was
appointed secretary of the University,
supervising an office that oversees special
events such as Commencement and the
sesquicentennial celebration. He will succeed Mary Lou DeLong NC’71, a former
senior vice president of University relations, who will retire in December. Kelli
Armstrong, who has directed institutional
research at Boston College, was appointed
a vice president. z The World History
Association Book Prize for 2012 has gone
to Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not:
Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850, by
history professor Prasannan Parthasarathi.
Parthasarathi’s thesis rests on social
development, and not merely technology—the usual suspect. z The New
England Aquarium and the Institute for
Contemporary Art have been entered into
the list of Boston cultural organizations

it’s academic—Oprah Winfrey (center) came to Boston College on August 2, to visit with seven graduates from the first class of the Oprah Winfrey
Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, who were meeting with faculty and student groups to prepare for their initial year attending U.S. colleges.

that offer free admission to students.
z The University Library joined the

Center for Research Libraries, which
offers online access to “little-known”
documents, including Albert Einstein’s
doctoral dissertation, railroad timetables
from the late 19th century, and more than
100,000 pages from the archives of the
Khmer Rouge regime. z Connell School
dean Susan Gennaro was appointed
to the National Advisory Council for
Nursing Research, which advises the NIH
on research relating to nursing practice.
z The (relatively) new Office of Health
Promotion certified its first class of
“health coaches”—34 students who’ve
been trained to assist other students with
the development of health improvement
plans. z Maxim Shrayer, professor
of Russian, English, and Jewish studies,
received a Guggenheim Fellowship to

photograph: Lee Pellegrini

support work on the contemporaneous
literary response to the Holocaust by
Jewish-Russian poets serving in the Soviet
armed forces or as war correspondents. z
This year’s Venture Competition prize
($10,000) went to biology majors Deckard
Sorensen ’12 and Miguel Galvez ’12, who
with a nanotechnologist colleague at MIT
designed a water collecting device that
would optimize condensation collection
from small amounts of moisture in desert
air. The device is named for the Namib
beetle, a desert creature that Sorensen
studied and that creates a personal water
supply by collecting condensate on its
body. z Bloomberg Businessweek ranked
the Carroll School of Management’s
undergraduate program ninth-best in
the nation. z “The University’s decision to turn O’Neill Plaza into a lawn will
beautify campus and give a Dustbowl-

like feel,” the Heights editorialized,

offering further evidence that Dustbowl
doesn’t mean dustbowl on Chestnut Hill.
z Researchers working on the history of
Boston College in conjunction with several sesquicentennial projects have identified the designer of the original Boston
College seal, long thought to be the work
of late 19th-century Jesuits with time and
claret on their hands. The creator was
Pierre de Chaignon la Rose (1871–1940),
a Harvard graduate who liked to describe
himself as “a man of letters” but who published little and made a life as a purveyor
of dressy heraldry to colleges and bishops.
A rumor that his birth name was Peter
Ross was never proven. His précis of the
Boston College seal begins: “On a field
gules, above a trimount in base or, an open
book argent edged of the second, thereon
an inscription . . .”
—Ben Birnbaum
s um m e r 20 12 v b c m

t was billed as a panel discussion
on the challenges facing modern
American theater, but it unfolded with
the feel of a two-act play. Act I could
have been entitled The Perils of a Theater
Career. Act II: The Show Must Go On.
The audience consisted of about 30
students who turned out on a spring
afternoon to hear the stories of three
artistic directors from regional theaters,
all Boston College graduates. Entitled
“Tough Decisions: Leading the American
Theater in the 21st Century,” the symposium was held April 26 in Gasson Hall
and sponsored by the theater department.
David Dower, the head of artistic programs at ArtsEmerson in Boston, moderated; he opened by asking each panelist to
talk about a moment of great challenge.
Kate Maguire ’77, the artistic director
of the Berkshire Theatre Group (BTG),
told of being hired to run the Berkshire
Theatre Festival 16 years ago and having to work with a 50-member board of

6

bcm v sum me r 2012

directors. “There was one really powerful
woman, and . . . 49 people who were basically there for cocktail hour,” she said. At
the end of her second season, Maguire
recalled, the board chair took her aside
and told her, “We hate everything you
did,” singling out a play written by Orson
Welles in the early 1950s called Moby
Dick—Rehearsed. Maguire was mystified.
“I said, ‘Moby Dick? The one that was
based on a story by Melville, who lived in
the Berkshires? I thought that was a good
idea.’” The board chair’s response: “We
like happy endings, and stars.”
“The next season,” Maguire said, “I
opened with Camelot” and began a gradual
process of “educating the audience”—adding unfamiliar pieces into a more traditional summer lineup. In the current season, the BTG is staging several premieres,
including Edith, a drama about the wife of
President Woodrow Wilson, along with
standards such as A Thousand Clowns and
A Chorus Line. “It took about 10 years to

get to the point where I feel like I present
the plays to the board, and they trust me,”
Maguire said. She also noted that over that
decade she helped reshape the board, making it smaller (it currently has 38 members) and more participatory. In addition,
she oversaw the 2011 merger between
the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the
Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield to form the
Berkshire Theatre Group, an organization
with five theaters in three towns.
Tony Taccone ’72, the artistic director since 1997 of the Berkeley Repertory
Theatre in Berkeley, California, noted that
“artistic directors live in this place between
the artists and the public.” His moment of
great challenge came, he said, in the fall of
2002, five years into his tenure. “We had
three shows in a row that tanked”—for
various reasons. One play, John Guare’s
1966 The House of Blue Leaves, was a dark
comedy that included a terrorist bomber
in Queens, New York. Poor ticket sales
suggested it was too soon after September
11, 2001, to find humor in this subject.
The other failed productions foundered
upon irreconcilable differences between
Taccone and their directors. “My general
manager is walking around saying things
like ‘We’re hemorrhaging!’” he recalled.
Taccone was by then well established—
he had commissioned Tony Kushner’s
Angels in America while at San Francisco’s
Eureka Theatre in the 1980s—and when
one of his Berkeley Repertory board
members—a Bay Area entrepreneur—told
him, “We pay you to take risks—keep taking them,” he rededicated the company
to “doing out-of-the-box stuff and taking
advantage of . . . our audience, which is
highly educated and actually can handle a
work of metaphor,” Taccone said. Recent
productions include not only last year’s
Three Sisters by Chekov, but also the 2009
world premiere of the musical American
Idiot and the 2010 premiere of Lemony
Snicket’s The Composer is Dead. “Now
we don’t sell play titles, we sell artists,”
Taccone said.
Paul Daigneault ’87, the artistic director and founder of SpeakEasy Stage
Company in Boston, recalled a telling
comment made by Broadway actress Alice
Ripley at a recent SpeakEasy event. Ripley
said young people going into theater
should think of their career as a lighted

photograph: Lee Pellegrini

candle, Daigneault recounted. “Other
people will try to blow out your candle,
and you’ve got to keep it burning.” To
which Taccone added, “and there’s wax
dripping on your hand, and the wax hurts
your hand.”
Both Daigneault and Maguire said
coping with fear of flops is part of the job.
“If I choose a show, and I’m not afraid of
it in some way, I think there’s something
wrong,” Daigneault said. Maguire said her
planning with colleagues always involves
asking, “‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ And there are probably six worst
things that can happen, and we prepare for
all six,” from poor ticket sales to losing an
actor to the kitchen staff quitting.
when the discussion shifted
from risks to rewards, the panelists made
it clear they love their work. Taccone
described the satisfaction of bringing an
artistic vision to the stage. “The look on an
artist’s face, a playwright, an actor, a director, when you realize their work. . . . You
are trying to pursue deep truths through
the prism of each other.”
Maguire spoke of the possibility of
an audience member transformed. She
recently learned that one of her colleagues
had abandoned moral judgments about
gays after seeing the BTG’s production
of Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour!
Compassion! “I thought, ‘That’s why I do
this,’” Maguire said.
The panelists also rejected the notion
that theater is endangered by the proliferation of other media. “As long as I’ve been
alive, theater has been dying,” Taccone
said. “It’s not dying, but it’s changing.”
As productions incorporate increasingly
sophisticated sound, lighting, and video
effects, there are more opportunities for
talented—and technically savvy—young
people to break in.
That message wasn’t lost on John
Delfino ’12, who for the past year has been
volunteering in the SpeakEasy lighting
department. Like most theater students,
he started out at Boston College hoping
for an acting career but came to realize
the technical aspects are “no less creative.
You’re not any less involved in the theatrical process when you’re not on stage.” n

Collected works
Since 2003, seniors have had the option of uploading their undergraduate honors
thesis, two semesters worth of research, late nights, and rewrites, to the University
Libraries Digital Collections website. The site, which is accessible to all, is now home
to over 400 studies, including 25 produced by the Class of 2012. Among this year’s
subjects:
ECONOMIC MATTERS
Do Patent Trolls Exist? Examining the Economic Impact of Non-Practicing
Entities and Patent Infringement Litigation on Innovation, by Ryan P.
DiStefano (Economics, International Studies)
Hysteresis in the Current Recession: Evidence and Consequences, by Daniel
Paul Sulkin (CSOM Honors)
Nurse Practitioners: Limiting the Trade-Off between Quality and Cost,
by Margaret Julia Connolly (Economics)
Rethinking the Phillips Curve: A Study of Recent Inflation Dynamics in the
G-7, by Mark Andrew Cloutier (Economics)
SOCIAL ISSUES
Defining the Role of Caregivers in Promoting Maternal Adaptation in
Unintended Pregnancies, by Christy N. Tran (A&S Honors)
Living a Legacy: Eleanor Roosevelt as a Role Model for Betty Ford and
Rosalynn Carter, by Ellen K. Zatkowski (A&S Honors)
A Prisoner’s Daughter: An Autoethnographic Account of the Effect of
Incarceration on the Families of White Collar Offenders, by Alexandra
Villamia Drimal (Sociology)
Boston: the Red Sox, the Celtics, and Race, 1945–1969, by Nicholas Mark
Dow (A&S Honors)
To Teach and to Please: Reality TV as an Agent of Societal Change,
by Robert J. Vogel (Communication)
Intercultural Bilingual Education among Indigenous Populations in
Latin America: Policy and Practice in Peru, by Mairead McNameeKing
(International Studies)
ENVIRONMENTS, PAST AND PRESENT
Josephus and His Choice: Reading the ‘Bellum Judaicum’ within the
Greco-Roman Historiographic Tradition, by Adam D. Gross (Classics)
Variability of Suspended-Sediment Concentration in the Connecticut River
Estuary, by Michael Vincent William Cuttler (Geology and Geophysics)
‘Better Angels’: Tea Partisanship in the New Hampshire State Legislature,
by Brendan C. Benedict (Political Science)
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crises:
An Argument for Normal Accident Theory, by Margaux Salome Labaudiniere
(A&S Honors)

Senior theses may be read at the University Library’s eScholarship site via Full
Dave Denison is a Boston-based writer.

Story, at www.bc.edu/bcm.

s um m e r 20 12 v b c m

7

News of
the world
By Reeves Wiedeman

In the Heights—as in any local newspaper—the big stories from near and far have
jockeyed for space

Editor’s note: In June, the University Library, in commemoration of Boston College’s 150th
anniversary, completed the posting of a searchable version of the Heights student newspaper,
from its founding in 1919 through May 2010. BCM asked Reeves Wiedeman ’08, a contributor
to the newspaper from 2004 to 2008, to see what he could learn from a walk through some of
those online pages.

O

n November 19, 1919, the United
States Senate rejected the Treaty of
Versailles, spelling doom for the League
of Nations, news continued to circulate
of a successful test by European scientists
of the general theory of relativity, and the
Prince of Wales visited New York City.
Also on that day, in Chestnut Hill, Boston
College’s student newspaper, the Heights,
distributed its first edition.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Albert Einstein,
and Prince Edward earned no mention in
the four printed pages, each smaller than
a sheet of notebook paper. There were
only two front-page stories, one about
a senior class smoker, the other about
a football win by “our stout-hearted
lads.” Inside, the paper took a moment to
explain itself: “The Heights is for Boston
College. Every particle of space in every
single issue will be devoted to the greater
glory of Old BC.”
The Heights is peculiar in the way all
college newspapers are. A university’s history can be divided into four-year microgenerations, which means that for the past
nine decades, the Heights has never possessed an editorial voice: It has possessed
scores, each distinctive sound left behind
by one graduating class to be modulated
or replaced by the next one. The paper’s
newly digitized archive omits none of
the sounds these men and women made.
If you scored the winning touchdown
against Notre Dame, it’s there. If you

8

bcm v sum me r 2012

celebrated that touchdown with too much
fervor, the police blotter will be there as
well. If, like me, you worked on the newspaper and hope to forget most of what you
wrote in your late teens and early twenties,
well, all that is there, too. The Heights, over
nine decades, has offered the stories that
mattered to students, opinions that conveyed campus temperature, and advertisements featuring products that someone,
somewhere, thought relevant to the lives
of Boston College students.
in late october 1929, boston
College, only recently transplanted from
the South End to Chestnut Hill, was a
community of young strivers, sons of
the working and middle classes who
aspired to professional careers. The
Great Depression, as it began, must have
loomed as an extraordinary threat to those
dreams, though it seems to have entered
the paper mostly in connection with
cheerier events, such as the 1933 freshman prom: “In view of the depression and
the financial crisis, the price is the lowest
for many years.”
What did preoccupy the Heights and
the Heights in the 1930s was football,
and lots of it. The paper published more
articles mentioning the sport in this
decade than in any later decade save the
2000s, when it began publishing twice
a week. In the issue dated November
5, 1929, the first after Black Tuesday, a

front-page story described a prospective meeting with Fordham as “a death
struggle that will be the focus of national
football interest.” (“The great Battering
Ram of Fordham,” the Heights reported
in its subsequent issue, bested the Eagles,
7–6.) Cigarette advertisements featured
football players as spokesmen. For that
year’s game against Holy Cross, played
at Fenway Park, the Heights published a
34-page program. Its general tenor could
be summarized in the closing line of an
unsigned editorial in the issue proper:
“Football . . . It’s a great game!”
Heights writers did make occasional
forays into the world’s serious concerns,
but rarely persevered. In the spring of
1933, the newspaper turned over space
each week to Gabriel G. Ryan ’35, a student who wrote a column titled “State
of Affairs.” Ryan contributed articles
about politics, economics, and world matters—President Roosevelt’s emergency
shutdown of the banks, a disarmament
conference in Geneva, the possible repeal
of Prohibition. (He concluded one dispatch, from Washington, D.C., regarding
the “international monetary problem,”
with this summary statement: “The beer
was good.”) By semester’s end, the column
was no more.
the first front page after pearl
Harbor included three stories on “the
present emergency” along with pieces
about the Christmas social, the appointment of a new junior dance committee, a
banquet sponsored by the Spanish department, and an on-campus demonstration of
color photography.
Then came reminders to register for
the draft and articles about the difficulty
one would face in finding a job if saddled
with a draft number that was likely to be
called. Ed Weiss ’42, a Heights columnist,
began a piece on December 12, 1942,
with this glum assessment: “The general
consensus is that the future is not only
uncertain but non-existent.” One week
later, the paper described a slate of newly
created spring courses in “piloting, dead
reckoning, celestial navigation, nautical
astronomy, and maritime law,” and in
February a front page story announced
that, due to “present world conditions,”
the university rifle team, which had been

disbanded, would be revived. Ads for tuxedos and formal wear, to wear at prom and
campus balls, were replaced by more ads
for cigarettes. “You want steady nerves
to fly Uncle Sam’s bombers across the
ocean,” one read.
the heights editors, for their
part, seemed to hope (like many
Americans) that the whole thing would
soon pass. Dick Keating ’42, the paper’s
social chronicler, cheerily (or perhaps
with mock cheer) noted that though the
Japanese were “trying their darndest to
disrupt our social program, we are carrying on with the noble tradition established
by the lions who have gone before us.” He
was talking about the Christmas dance. In
January, Keating wrote that he had joined
the war effort: To save ink he had cut the
length of his column—in which he listed
each attendee at the Christmas dance—
by half.
Two weeks later, a new course in
Morse code was announced at the bottom
of the front page, with the goal of producing students capable of sending and receiving 10 words a minute. The top story that
day, however, was that Dick Keating had
accepted the role of Little Eva in a campus
production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Students and faculty would have been
away from campus in June 1954, when
Army counsel Joseph Welch inquired
into Senator Joseph McCarthy’s sense
of decency, but they returned in time for
the latter’s censure. The Army-McCarthy
hearings themselves earned only one
explicit mention in the Heights, in a weekly
column on national affairs by a student,
Bill Kenney ’54.
The Heights, for its part, had come out
against McCarthy in October 1952, condemning him as a “demagogue” with “little
regard for the intelligence of the common
man.” But, by and large, the anti communist movement had support on campus. In
response to a Heights survey several years
earlier, in 1948, about how to improve
the paper’s coverage, one reader had suggested, “Special column on world affairs—
especially the current topic ‘Communism,’
and its evil effects on Christian life should
be stressed.” The editors felt the need to
append this note to their 1952 editorial
decrying McCarthy’s efforts: “We are not

photograph: Courtesy John J. Burns Library Archive

The Heights front page on Friday, December 12, 1941—the first issue published after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor.

now, nor have we ever been, members of
the Communist party.” The editorial itself
produced half a dozen published letters,
most of them in disagreement.
On October 1, 1954, The Heights put
the question of McCarthy’s possible censure to the student body. “When do we
hear of the good he has done for the country?” one student responded. Opinion was
divided, just as it was two weeks later in
another Heights poll: “Should there be a
Juke Box in the Snack Bar?” There was
some opposition, but most of the respon-

dents were in favor. “Yes,” one said. “It
would liven up some of those dull classes
on the first floor.” n
Reeves Wiedeman ’08 is on the editorial
staff at the New Yorker. In 2006 he was the
Heights editor-in-chief.

Back issues of the Heights
digitized by the University Library
may be found on the Library’s website
under “digital collections” or viewed
via Full Story, www.bc.edu/bcm

s um m e r 20 12 v b c m

9

Pacitto and companion on a Brighton campus playing field.

Top dog
By Ben Birnbaum
A field report

O

ne hot afternoon in July, I visited
the habitat of a creature without a
real name, whom I will call Wile E. Wile
E. is a tan, hollow-bodied plastic coyote
with blue eyes, and he and a twin—whom
I’ll also call Wile E., because I don’t know
which is which—are on most days all that
stand between the Brighton Campus practice fields and a local pack of Canada geese
who avidly dine on grass and leave behind
a rich garnish of consequences.
When I first spotted Wile E., he was
defending the westernmost of the fields,
just below St. John’s Seminary. I believe
the grass was marked up for rugby, but
if it had been marked for football, Wile
E. would have been a wide-out on the 50
yard line, his shoulders down, his head
up, and his nose pointed at Lake Street,
100 yards distant, where a man coasted
downhill on a bicycle. Wile E.’s brushy tail
was tilted left (it can also be rotated to up,
down, and right positions), and his ears
pointed forward (these, too, can be rotat-

10

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

ed). Wile E. did not move, of course, but
he looked as though he might. Not a goose
was visible on the ground or in the sky.
Wile E. is to some degree the descendant of Blaze and Tucker, English setters
that Boston College acquired in the late
1990s, and who (along with their successors) have since been driving Branta
canadensis from the practice facilities on
Shea Field. Prior to the dogs’ arrival, the
responsibility for clearing goose accrual—
sometimes 200 pounds a day—fell to
groundskeepers wielding a lawn sweeper
and wearing raincoats. “The guys love
Blaze and Tucker,” a grounds supervisor
told Boston College Magazine in 2000.
But what works on fenced-in Shea
Field, doesn’t work on the open, 65-acre
Brighton campus, I was told by Domenic
Pacitto. A groundskeeper, Pacitto has
become one of the University’s two designated coyote handlers since “the dogs”
(as he calls them) were purchased in April,
setting the beasts out in early morning and

bringing them in at the end of his shift. A
voluble, broad-shouldered man with leanings toward irony, Pacitto, who previously
worked for the archdiocese, recalls the
arrival of geese on the property in the late
1980s. Sitting in his BC-issue pickup truck
a few yards from where Wile E. contemplated Lake Street traffic, he mused, “They
started on Chandler Pond”—a head nod to
the west—“and then they moved to Rogers
Park—a nod to the north—“then here.”
Soon after Pacitto and his partner
began setting out the coyotes, however, the
plague ended. “We haven’t had a goose on
the property since the beginning of football camp, in the second week of June,” he
said with satisfaction in late July. He said
he and his partner, Jeff Pearson, thought
about holding a naming contest for the
creatures, but were concerned that publicity might be bad for the coyotes’ tenure.
(Two coyotes purchased last spring disappeared during senior week in May. One
turned up in the tent erected for the School
of Theology and Ministry graduation
ceremonies, like a baby left on the church
steps. The other remains borrowed.)
A greater threat to the coyotes came
from children at Boston Public’s Thomas
A. Edison Junior High School, a K–8
establishment whose red-brick building
overlooks the Brighton Campus playing
fields. Like the geese, the schoolchildren
were highly impressed by what they saw
on the field one day. Animal control
officers were summoned by teachers,
but Wile E.—who suffers from seams
where his haunches, chest, neck, and legs
meet—lived to stand guard another day,
when the wind blew hard and the children
looked out their window and saw the coyote lying on his side. “The kids cried,” said
Pacitto, shaking his head. “They thought
it was a dead dog.” Boston College pulled
the coyotes off duty until it completed an
informational mailing to Brighton residents near the campus. That doesn’t keep
some people from wondering, however.
Recently, Pacitto said, he saw a woman
standing on one of the campus roadways
and staring at the stock-still coyote in the
field. “Is that dog okay?” she asked Pacitto.
“Sure,” he said, and walked up to Wile E.
and knelt and poured water from a bottle
into his cupped hand and brought it to the
coyote’s snout. The woman moved off. n

photograph: Lee Pellegrini

The western wall of Stokes Hall in early summer.

CLOSE-UP: stone face
In summer 2011, a team of 25 masons
began cladding the facade of Stokes Hall,
the University’s new 183,000-square-foot
academic building. When the job is done,
in late fall, they will have laid approximately 11,000 pieces of limestone and
44,000 pieces of granite, covering some
55,000 square feet of walls, gables (13),
arches (nine), and window frames (550).
Preparations commenced in 2010,
when representatives from Boston College and the architectural firm Tsoi/
Kobus selected granite from a quarry
in York, Maine, called Old York Blend,
compatible in color and texture with the
stonework on adjacent McElroy Commons and Lyons Hall. (Stone was not
always imported to the Heights. It is
likely that Gasson Hall, the first building
erected, included stones excavated or
found on-site—the remains of walls and
old foundations.)
About the same time the granite was

photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert

selected, the architect and contractors
chose an Indiana limestone and picked
out approximately 25,000 cubic feet of
quarried stone that had been seasoned in
the open air for one year. Seasoning allows “quarry sap”—trapped moisture that
contains discoloring organic matter—to
leach out. A fabricator in Minnesota
milled and sculpted the limestone into
arches, window frames, ornamental panels, and quoins, numbering each finished
piece according to its destination on the
building’s exterior.
The granite and limestone facade is
just that, a facade. It cloaks—but does
not directly touch—a structural wall of
reinforced concrete blocks. This concrete wall is clothed with a waterproof
membrane that is, in turn, covered in
blue foam insulation panels. The exterior stonework sits two-to-three inches
of open space away from the insulated
concrete, secured to the support wall by

metal anchors fixed in the exterior wall’s
mortar and screwed into the concrete.
The granite slabs weigh between 20
and 150 pounds each. Workers on the
ground assemble pallets of stones for the
area under construction using printouts
of a template to guide their choice of
size and color. Before setting the pieces
in place by hand, the masons bevel the
stones’ edges to produce a smooth visual transition between pieces and, as
needed, excavate depressions to create
visual “depth” in the wall’s profile. “They
put the chisel to every piece,” says Brian
Black, the on-site masonry manager.
A three-man team can build some 400
square feet of granite wall in a week.
After four weeks of curing, the new
masonry is gone over with brushes and
detergent to clean off stray bits of mortar
and other debris. The facade should be
good for at least a hundred years.
—Thomas Cooper

photograph:
Caitlin v
Cunningham
s um m e r 2012
b c m 11

A parent’s rite of passage
Photographs by Lee Pellegrini
Text by William Bole

On a picture-perfect Sunday afternoon in June, more
than 700 incoming first-year students and parents
found their way to St. Ignatius Church, where they
heard Fr. Joseph Marchese, director of Boston College’s
Office of First Year Experience, deliver the first words
of greeting: “Why start here?”
They settled in for a Mass that would officially kick
off a three-day freshman orientation, the first of seven
such sessions offered by Marchese’s office for students
and parents throughout the summer. Looking out on
the overflowing congregation—a sea of bright polo
shirts and sundresses—Marchese, in a slate-colored
summer suit, answered his own question. “We’re a
Catholic Jesuit university,” he said, and he told of St.
Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, and of
the nearly 500-year-old tradition of Jesuit education.
“We’re of different faiths,” he said of the assemblage,
“but we come, and we share,” because this legacy
belongs to all. Gregory Kalscheur, SJ, senior associate
dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, celebrated the
Mass. In his homily, he limned the Jesuit vision of the
world, in which “God is everywhere and anywhere at
work,” where the soul can be nurtured in a biology lab,
a political science class, or a dining hall.
Freshman orientation at Boston College and at many

other universities has developed markedly since the
days when incoming students were briefed for a few
hours in the basics of registration and dorm rules and
then sent off to class. Orientations now are often intensive multi-day affairs, and one of the more recent innovations has to do with the parents: Increasingly, when
they arrive with the students they stay.
Cheryl Bui of Villa Park, California, mother of Matt
’16, remembers when her parents dropped her off at
her college orientation and lingered just long enough
to “make sure the dorm wasn’t coed.” At the Sunday
through Tuesday, June 10–12, orientation in Chestnut
Hill, she and more than 400 other parents took part in
three tightly scheduled days of meetings that ran concurrently with the freshman students’ program. They
heard what their sons and daughters heard about the
nature and identity of Boston College and generally
about the transition from high school to college. The
students roomed together in Vanderslice Hall and 90
St. Thomas More Road; the parents found accommodations off campus.
Sometimes dubbed “Empty Nesting 101,” parent
orientations came very early to Boston College, when
Marchese, newly installed as First Year Experience (FYE)
director, created a voluntary three-day parent program

opposite, top: Kathryn Casey (left, mother of Kate ’16, not shown) of San Antonio, Texas, and Cheryl Bui (mother of Matt ’16) of Orange County, California, at
registration in the Newton Room. bottom: Miles Pritchard and his son Dylan ’16 of Los Angeles, California, at Sunday’s Mass in St. Ignatius. above: Michael Bolden
’81 and Fran Cook-Bolden of Ossining, New York, with their son Alfred ’16 in McElroy Commons during Sunday dinner.

in 1995 at the same time that he revamped the orientation required of freshmen. The idea was to inject into
both programs the University’s emphasis on academic
excellence, or what Marchese calls “intellectual precociousness,” at a moment when Boston College was on
the cusp of becoming highly selective. There was to be
an equal stress on Jesuit identity. (Additionally, for the
students, there would be opportunities through the
year to take part in freshman retreats and other programs sponsored by FYE.)
These days, parent orientation imparts plenty of nutsand-bolts information about academic requirements
and campus life and offers presentations on account
billing, student employment, and Eagle-One, the identification cum debit card. But the higher purpose
remains—to introduce parents to a certain “philosophy
and spirituality of education,” Marchese says.

Especially on Sunday night and late Tuesday afternoon, at the first and final sessions in Robsham
Theater (along with Sunday dinner, the only sessions
that brought together parents and incoming students),
there were lively demonstrations of the rah-rah as
well as profound seriousness. Sometimes those moods
came very close together: On Tuesday, Robsham erupted with foot-stomping, handclapping “Eagles on the
warpath, ooh, aah” chants. A moment later Marchese,
who is a diocesan priest, was propounding the Jesuit
concept of magis or “the more.” Always seek “more of
the goodness of creation,” he urged.
No small part of the goal of orientation at Boston
College and other institutions is to encourage parents
to let go of their children, to give them space to choose
their own paths. This priority has become more pronounced in the age of so-called helicopter parents who
s um m e r 2012 v b c m

15

hover over their children, “orchestrating their lives,”
notes Elizabeth Bracher ’91, the associate director of
First Year Experience, who earned a Ph.D. in applied
developmental psychology at Boston College in 2004.
At a Monday morning “Challenge of Transition” session
in Devlin Hall, parents heard from, among others, the
director of the office of residential life, George Arey.
He described a typical “awkward moment”: A student
with whom he is discussing a dorm problem pieces
together enough to say, “My mom called you, didn’t
she?” (Mom, says Arey, has usually instructed the
director not to say she called.) “We want [students] to
come in and have that conversation—before we hear
from you,” Arey said as a number of parents in the
tiered lecture hall nodded in agreement. “We take your
child’s development as an adult very seriously.”
The “letting go” message, however, was not unmixed.
Members of several panels requested parental help, on
such matters as alcohol consumption and participation
in student activities (parents were asked repeatedly to
remind their freshmen about the Student Involvement
Fair slated for September 7). Arey pointed out that a
student’s Facebook page will often be the first impression he or she makes on peers—“something you need
to take a look at,” he recommended.
Earlier that morning, parents had heard from a student panel. “My mom put me on a plane and said,
‘Good luck!’” recounted Christopher Ager ’14, of
Gjettum, Norway, who majors in international studies.
“It worked for me.” His recollection drew laughs from
the parents in Robsham, as did his follow-up: “We
Skype.” Another student spoke of a more trying process in which her parents could not let go of “the person I was in high school,” a cheerleader who thought
she would do more of the same in college but quickly
discovered other passions. “I was growing as a person,”
said the rising senior, who described her involvement
with service projects such as Appalachia Volunteers.
The panel was culled from the 43 student orientation
leaders, who were identifiable throughout the session
by their Land’s End polo shirts (a different color each
day), name badges, and tan Bermuda shorts.

With the economic woes of recent years, parents
have become increasingly attentive to how college
will prepare the way for gainful work, according to
many higher education professionals. Perhaps counterintuitively, those who speak for Boston College at its
orientations have responded by doubling down on the
message that a university is not an employment agency
with gothic towers; students are there to discover their
passions and learn how to think and serve others. The
case against the “utilitarian view of education” is more
urgent than ever, Marchese tells parents.
It is not a knockdown argument. “The Jesuits seem
to be saying that college isn’t for getting a job,” said
Dennis Minett, who has worked for 34 years as a
pipefitter at General Dynamics Electric Boat in North
Kingstown, Rhode Island. “Of course,” he added matter-of-factly, “that’s what everyone is here for.”
This question of what college is for provoked some
of the liveliest discussion in the sessions, in hallways,
and over lunches in McElroy Commons. It was a conversation that seemed to evolve over the three days.
The chief provocateur was Fr. Michael Himes, a popular theology professor and diocesan priest, who spoke
on Sunday night to the full convocation of families.
On the darkened stage of Robsham, Himes’s lecture at times seemed more like a one-person play as
he paced from side to side with hands folded behind
his back when he wasn’t wagging a finger in the air
or otherwise gesturing theatrically. He indulged in
some Catholic collegiate rivalry, mentioning that he
formerly taught at Notre Dame—“if you would excuse
the expression,” he quipped, eliciting cheers across the
jam-packed auditorium. He saluted the “great faculty”
at Boston College, the “great” students, and the “great
sacrifices” parents make, but the platitudes were soon
paired with critical reflection upon the purposes of
higher education.
After a preamble about how “robust conversation”
defines a great university, Himes arrived at his core
contention. A great university is not about finding
a job or “adding a zero to a starting salary line” or
even getting into graduate school, he said. “Don’t get

me wrong,” Himes went on in his curiously blended
accent, part Brooklyn and part Britain (having grown
up in the borough, around relatives from abroad). “It’s
terribly important. It’s just not what a university is
good at. It’s not what it’s about.” He continued—“It’s
about producing intellectuals.” These are people who
are never completely satisfied with an answer to a big
question and always keep probing. Their rallying cry is,
as Himes put it, “Yes, but.”
At a place like Boston College, he said, students
ask questions about human existence, about who they
want to become, and how they can channel their passions and talents into service to the world. During the
Q&A, a parent asked from his seat in a middle row
what “we,” parents, should fear most about what lies
ahead in college. Himes replied in an instant—“that at
no time in the next four years will your student shock

you and fill you with horror.” The response brought
down the house, although a disproportionate share of
the high-spirited clapping and cheering appeared to
come from younger hands and voices.
The next day, Peter and Sue Lynch of Rockville
Centre, New York, were trolling the main bookstore in
McElroy for some maroon and gold, as were other parents during the lunch break. Holding a clutch of hangers with Boston College sweatpants, sweatshirts, and
jerseys, Lynch, a banker, said he agrees that students
should try to discover their passions but feels nonetheless that “college is for getting a job that will make it
possible to do well and raise a family.” Encountered
a day later at the entrance of Devlin, however, Lynch
spoke more dissonantly about “two views,” including
the non-utilitarian outlook. “Not sure which is right,”
he said this time. Sue Lynch expressed a proposition
s um m e r 2012 v b c m

19

above: Marchese with student First Year Experience leaders in the Robsham Green Room, prior to a student panel. opposite: After the closing program on Tuesday, parents and members of the Class of 2016 depart Robsham Theater, passing a line of cheering FYE leaders.

heard often at parent orientation: “If you learn to think
well, you could apply that to all areas” of professional
life, in a world that is changing too fast for a narrow
education.
Arthur Vera, a lawyer in Miami, had nothing less
than an epiphany. A specialist in mergers and acquisitions, Vera said that after returning to his hotel on
Sunday night, he mentioned to his wife that the Himes
critique seemed “almost medieval,” as in outmoded.
But he said on Tuesday morning that after giving it
much thought and hearing further presentations on
the value of a contemporary liberal arts education,
“my thinking has completely shifted,” particularly on
questions surrounding his daughter Olivia’s major and
career focus. He added, with a look that suggested
surprise at his own words—“My daughter is here to be
an intellectual.”
20

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Standing on Robsham Plaza in a crush of parents
after the closing ceremony, Myles Pritchard, a wealth
manager in Los Angeles, said, “When we get back
home, I have to talk with my son about whether he still
wants to be premed. Is that what he really wants? Or is
he just doing it for the money?”
At bottom, says Marchese, the question that grips
parents is an existential one: Will you care for my
child? At the start of the orientation, Bui, who recently
retired as a business development manager with
Procter & Gamble in Orange County, California, said
she came to the orientation for “peace of mind.” She
explained, “When you live 2,600 miles away, you have
to be able to put your faith and trust in the institution.”
Early Monday morning, sitting out on Robsham Plaza
with a cup of coffee, Bui was ready to say her confidence was increasing. n

22

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

photograph: Courtesy John J. Burns Library Archive

how one high-octane jesuit and thousands of ordinary
bostonians moved boston college to high ground

by james o’toole
This is the second of three articles by Professor James O’Toole
highlighting defining moments in Boston College’s history as
BCM observes the 150th anniversary of the University’s founding in 1863. The first article, “Class Warfare” (Winter 2012),
recounted the curriculum debates that ensued when, as the 20th
century dawned, Harvard University Law School declined to
recognize the Boston College degree. Along with details of the
University’s coming celebrations, that story is featured at the
sesquicentennial website at www.bc.edu/150.

A

front-page announcement in the Boston
Globe noted the transition. “Rev. Fr.
Gasson New President,” the headline read
on the morning of January 7, 1907; “Head
of Boston College–Famed as Preacher.”
Gasson’s reputation had been building locally for some
time. He had served on the Boston College faculty for a
dozen years, an unusually long tenure given the Jesuits’
regular reassignment of personnel. Since 1904, he had also
been one of five trustees of the college, which was then
located in the cramped and deteriorating South End section
of Boston. By dint of personality (“he worked avidly, rapidly, always,” a colleague recalled), Gasson seemed well-suited
to move Boston College forward. That would include, as it
turned out, moving the school westward—from Harrison
Avenue, where the college students shared a single classroom building with younger scholars alongside the Jesuitstaffed Church of the Immaculate Conception—to the high
ground of Chestnut Hill.

left: June 1908 lawn party and fundraiser on the still pastoral Heights.

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

23

was a man of “almost unthinkable”
Gasson’s route to prominence
energy, a contemporary observed.
as a Jesuit was circuitous. He was
He enjoyed give-and-take with his
born in 1859 in a village near Kent,
listeners, and once challenged three
England, about 25 miles southeast
visiting Methodist ministers who
of London. After the death of his
insisted that the Bible had to be
mother and his father’s subsequent
the sole guide in religious matters.
remarriage, the 13-year-old decided
As the incident is recounted in an
to follow an older brother, who
obituary, Gasson demanded to be
had emigrated, to Philadelphia. On
shown where in Scripture it said
arrival, he found the brother strugthat only arguments from Scripture
gling to support himself and his
were acceptable.
wife, so Thomas began doing odd
Gasson was a driven man, hard
jobs for Irish servant women. One
on himself and exacting of othof these women, the story goes,
ers. In that, he was not unlike John
was shocked to learn that he was a
McElroy, SJ, founder of the college
Protestant. She introduced him to
in 1863. A priest friend recalled
a nearby convent of sisters; they
of Gasson, “Labor was his life.”
gave him religious instruction
Another noted, “neither his combefore bringing him to a Jesuit at
fort nor his health was of importhe parish church, who baptized
tance” to him. When the bell soundThomas as a Catholic on October
ed at the end of the class day, it did
5, 1874. Probably under the influThomas Gasson, SJ, in 1906, the year before he
not necessarily follow that his class
ence of that Jesuit, Gasson acquired
became President of Boston College.
was dismissed yet. Sometimes, his
a middle name: Ignatius. A year
big ideas threatened to run away
later, he entered the Jesuit novitiate
with him. Given the expense, it was
in Maryland. “All my relatives are
probably for the best that the college did not attempt to
Anglicans,” he would say as an adult, “who have always
open a medical school, as he hoped. Still, his vision and vigor
regarded my entrance into the Society [of Jesus] with
would transform Boston College.
extreme disapproval.”
After study and teaching in Baltimore and New York,
Gasson concluded his training at the Jesuit seminary in
Innsbruck, Austria. Few Americans were chosen for this
placement, and his selection signals an early judgment by
broad consensus was already in place for
his superiors of his promise. After ordination, he returned
remaking the school. As early as spring
to America and joined the Boston College faculty in 1894.
1899, at the annual alumni dinner at the
His instructional duties were typically broad for the times:
Parker House Hotel, Gasson’s predecessor,
rhetoric and German, philosophy and elocution, eventually
Read Mullan, SJ, had laid out a plan to clearpolitical economy and law. On and off, he oversaw the small
ly distinguish Boston College’s high school and collegiate
school library (as much as anyone did).
divisions. “The raising of the standards” would be essential,
It was Gasson’s presence on the Boston lecture circuit
he said. Just as important would be a physical relocation of
that secured his reputation outside school walls. At the end
the college. Mullan proposed “to let the [high] school have
of the 19th century, public lectures were a popular form of
the present buildings, and to erect new ones, which would
entertainment. In addition to making regular appearances at
be equipped with all the modern conveniences.”
the Young Men’s Catholic Association, Gasson was a favorWhere the college might go, Mullan couldn’t say. For the
ite at the Boston Public Library and at the Ford Hall Forum,
time being, he reallocated space in the South End building
a Yankee institution on Beacon Hill with claims to being
so that the high school and college programs occupied difthe oldest continuous public lecture series in the country (it
ferent corridors and their students used separate entrances.
still exists). Gasson’s themes could be secular or religious;
This brought some relief, the editors of the college’s student
his lecture on “Socialism,” in particular, prompted calls for
newspaper Stylus said: “The collegian may now walk forth
repeat performances.
in the calm of manhood without fear of being hustled about
Unprepossessing, (he had a “short stubby body,” one canby our small boys.” In 1904, the first high school graduation
did friend wrote), Gasson could command an audience. He
ceremony independent of the college took place.

A

24

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

photograph: Courtesy John J. Burns Library Archive

The city’s South End had built up rapidly since Boston
College’s founding in 1863, and the results were not always
welcome. Townhouses intended to attract the well-to-do
became rooming houses for a transient population. Back
gardens designed in imitation of fashionable London were
filled in with flimsy outbuildings. A guidebook for visitors to Boston in 1903 disparaged the neighborhood as “a
faded quarter” with a “seen-better-days” air. Installment
stores moved in, selling household items and clothes on
credit. “Sneak thieves in church,” a Jesuit at Immaculate
Conception wrote in his diary one day in 1907; “four boys;
pocketbooks stolen at late Mass.” Another day brought a
different petty crime: “Wine cellar broken into between 4
+ 5 a.m., two boys caught before 6:30.” What’s more, the
Jesuit residence was now half a century old and in need of
constant repair. Complaints were frequent (“kitchen sinks
clogged + overflowing, the odor rising to the heavens,” a
resident recorded one day).

in Watertown. Pastors of the era jealously guarded their
flocks, and there was some concern that a college chapel
might siphon off parishioners. Archbishop William Henry
O’Connell, who was advising Gasson both as a Church
leader and as an alumnus (Class of 1881), was unlikely to
approve any site that posed this threat.
Thirty acres on the north side of Commonwealth Avenue
in Brighton, the site today of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, next
caught his eye. This was “a splendid plateau, from which a
delightful view of the entire surrounding country could be
had,” and the land drew Gasson back for repeated visits.
But when he presented the idea to O’Connell the prelate
rejected it. St. Columbkille’s parish in Brighton Center
was less than a mile away, posing the same difficulty as the
Watertown location. “His Grace could not be moved from
this position,” Gasson later wrote resignedly.
At this point, “it seemed necessary to go to the suburbs,” Gasson concluded, and almost immediately his luck

stylus student editors wistfully imagined “a magnificent pile of marble
buildings situated on some great avenue, where the world might see it.”

An attractive parcel of land in Brookline caught Gasson’s
attention in early 1907, almost immediately after he became
president. “Beautiful Brookline” (as residents and nonresidents alike called it) was an independent town that
had recently resisted an effort by Boston to absorb it. The
property Gasson looked at was undeveloped—owned by
the prominent Sears family in what was called the Cottage
Farm neighborhood. Situated just west of Kenmore Square,
Cottage Farm nestled in an angle formed by the convergence of Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue, adjacent to a district subsequently known as Longwood. As a
site for the college, the Sears property offered a key advantage. It was not far from the original buildings on Harrison
Avenue and thus represented no great change in the mental
geography of the school. But there were disadvantages,
too, beginning with the price, more than $750,000. Gasson
also worried about “the swampy nature of the soil” and the
“railroad which fringes the property.” He decided to look
elsewhere.
Next to be considered, Gasson recalled later, was “a large
property . . . on the outskirts of Watertown, known as the
Cassidy estate,” a wedge of land along the Charles River
adjacent to a working federal arsenal. This land too was
swampy and pricey (though Gasson did not specify a cost).
Moreover, it was located not far from St. Patrick’s Church

changed, with his attention focused on a 40-acre “piece on
the Brighton-Newton line.” A broker had tried to interest
President Mullan in this parcel as early as 1900, describing
it as “almost intended by nature for the site of a large institution.” It was known as “the old Lawrence farm.”
Few Massachusetts families were more accomplished
than the Lawrences. Three brothers—Amos, Abbott, and
William—had been at the forefront of the revolution in
textile manufacturing early in the 19th century. In the
1840s, they and their associates founded the city 30 miles
north of Boston that bears the family name and that, with
neighboring Lowell, became for a time the epicenter of
American industry. In the next generation, family members turned to philanthropy and public service, with Amos
Adams Lawrence (son of the original Amos) standing out
as a committed abolitionist. As the controversy over slavery
mounted in the 1850s on the Kansas and Nebraska frontiers, he paid the moving expenses of “free-soil” settlers; a
city in Kansas bears the family name as well. To help the
settlers ward off their pro-slavery neighbors, he provided
guns, some of which wound up in the hands of John Brown,
the radical abolitionist (then in Kansas), who may have used
them in his attempt to free slaves in Virginia a few years
later, helping to ignite the Civil War.
In 1862, Lawrence acquired a farm in Chestnut Hill to
s um m e r 2012 v b c m

25

which he, his wife, and seven children could retreat from the
increasingly crowded city. This was a gentleman’s farm, but
it was also a working agricultural concern. Lawrence, a son
recalled, found relief in “superintending the plowing, sowing, and reaping, planting nurseries of fruit-trees, pruning
and grafting, overseeing the dairy.” A main house was built,
and there were various barns and sheds, together with a
small workman’s lodge constructed of stones from the colonial mansion of John Hancock on Beacon Hill (which had
been taken down in 1863). The original farm was more than
100 acres, but the city took the eastern part of it in the late
1860s to build the second of two reservoirs for the expanding metropolitan water system. The family complained
that this loss “deprived it of its bucolic aspect,” but what
remained was bucolic enough. Occupying a sloping plain
behind a steep rocky ledge, the site had a view toward the
city across the reservoir (called, appropriately, the Lawrence
Basin) that was practically unimpeded. Seen from town, the
land was almost the highest point for miles around.
Beacon Street marked one boundary of the farm as it
continued unbroken from Boston into Newton; developers hoped eventually to divide the land across Beacon into
house lots. On the other side was an extension into Newton
of Commonwealth Avenue, and here, too, the adjacent land
was largely undeveloped. A small cemetery fit between the
road and the reservoir on the Boston side of the line, and in
1880 Archbishop John J. Williams purchased the Stanwood
Estate across from it for his new diocesan seminary.
After Amos Adams Lawrence’s death in 1886, the family
began to think about selling off some of the farm. Most of it
was sold right away to a banker named Sylvester Hinckley,
who subsequently went broke, and several efforts were
made to subdivide and develop it. One proposal called for a
network of four streets and 50 house lots, to be laid out in
the area that comprises today’s Middle Campus. With the
ups and downs of the real estate market, plans for the site
were never realized, and the land was still open and available
when Gasson started looking for a new home for his college.

S

tudent and alumni anticipation grew in 1907
as word spread that the college might relocate.
“There is no student among us,” the editors of
the Stylus wrote after Gasson had been in office
less than a month, “who has a pygmy love” for
his alma mater; the students would be loyal to their school
even if it did not have “jewels and the social standing of
the first clique.” Even so, the editors wistfully imagined “a
magnificent pile of marble buildings situated on some great
avenue, where the world might see it, like a city on a mountain.” In March, after just two months as president, Gasson
26

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

wrote to the Jesuit provincial, asking approval to buy the
Lawrence property, and when the provincial was slow in
responding he wrote him again and traveled to New York
City to meet with him. Speaking at the annual alumni dinner
in May 1907, and without revealing the site he had in mind,
he told his audience that he wanted “a new location for the
college, where we will not be confined to one building, but
we will get a big group of buildings and grounds sufficient
for the uses of a big institution of learning.”
Private negotiations continued through the summer with
the provincial and with O’Connell. When all the approvals
were in hand, Gasson made the news public. “New Home
for Boston College in Newton,” the Globe’s headline read
on December 19. The deeds had been executed and filed the
previous day. “The site is one of the finest in New England
for college buildings,” the paper opined.
The news was greeted with resounding approval by
friends of the college. “I had heard that you were considering several sites,” Fr. Denis Wholey, a student at the school
for one year in the 1870s who was then pastor of Sacred
Heart parish in Newton Centre, wrote Gasson the moment
he read the morning paper. “You and your confreres have
come into possession of one of the most desirable estates in
the suburbs of Boston.” Aiming a dart at the university just
across the Charles River, Wholey added, “Cambridge may
soon have to bow down to Newton.” Fr. Francis Butler, an
1880 graduate and pastor of St. Leo’s parish in Dorchester,
was equally animated, telling his parishioners, “The cause of
Catholic education in this diocese is essentially involved in
the success of Boston College.” Support for the school, he
said, was “the greatest charity of the hour.”
In acquiring the land, Gasson had committed to paying
more than $260,000. Various stocks and bonds in which the
school had invested over the years were liquidated. Several
private houses that had been bequeathed to the Jesuits
by sympathetic supporters—mostly located in the South
End, but one of them (“a constant source of expense”) in
Pawtucket, Rhode Island—were similarly sold off. Shortterm mortgages on the existing buildings (the classroom
facility, the Jesuit residence, the church) were negotiated
and renegotiated. The lion’s share of the down payment
came from the estate of Edward Holker Welch, SJ, the last
of the original five incorporators of the school in 1863,
who had died three years before. Welch came from a family of successful lawyers in Boston; after graduating from
Harvard, he had converted to Catholicism and then joined
the Jesuits. A legacy from his father had grown to more than
$100,000. But more funds were needed.
Gasson “preached at most of the masses in behalf of the
New College,” a diarist at Immaculate Conception Church
noted early in 1908. Contributions, most of them $10 or
less, came quickly and were recorded in an account book

Undated view of the upper reservoir (now lower campus), from what is now middle campus. The remaining reservoir and the waterworks building on
Beacon Street can be seen in the distance at right.

that Gasson kept in his own hand. “Mrs. Mary Dyer,”
described by the president as “a poor widow, then living at
716 Harrison Avenue,” gave the first dollar. In 1908, more
than $26,000 was raised in this way, from nearly 2,000
separate benefactors. “Whoever contributed one dollar,”
Gasson explained, “received a card to the effect that the said
giver had donated one foot of land to the new college; to
those who gave more than one dollar, not a card, but a small
document was given, testifying that they had donated as
many feet of land as they had given dollars.” Modern methods of fundraising were in their infancy, but Gasson seems
to have had a natural affinity for them.
Current students also contributed. In January 1908, for
example, a Jesuit at the college presented three dollars—one
each from his students Joseph Duffy, Samuel Malone, and
David Lane—and two days later he passed along three more
dollars “from other boys, names not given.” The devotional
sodalities of Immaculate Conception Church joined in: $35
from the married men’s group, $100 from the young men’s
group, and $16 from the sodality for young women. Several
temperance societies, whose members took the lifelong
pledge to abstain from alcohol, pooled their contributions,
amounting to $159. The mother of Fr. John Butler, pastor of
a church in suburban Weymouth, sent in $40 “on account of
his fortieth birthday.” Gasson recorded $5 from “Kathleen
Meehan (deaf mute child)” and 25 cents from an unspecified “poor boy.” One woman sold off an heirloom pocket
photograph: Courtesy Andrew Nelson Collection

watch, and the college realized $114 from the transaction.
Margaret Kelly, identified only by her name, set herself
the goal of assembling “a mile of pennies,” and over the
course of a year sent in $67.33. With the coins laid flat, that
sum would have stretched to a mere 421 feet (or so), but
one imagines Gasson making much of her efforts. Slightly
more than half of the individual contributors were women.
None of them could yet attend Boston College, and there
was no thought whatever of admitting them. Still, Boston’s
Catholic women supported the school in the hope that it
would continue to benefit their brothers and sons.
When summer came, the land itself was used to elicit
support. At the end of June in 1908, alumni and friends
were invited to the property for a “reunion and field day,”
the climax of which was a formal dedication ceremony.
An “immense throng,” estimated by the Globe at 25,000,
showed up to enjoy carnival rides, vaudeville shows, and
games of chance, the proceeds of which were devoted to the
college’s cause. At the end of the afternoon, Gasson introduced the featured speaker, Bourke Cockran, a Catholic
congressman from New York whose oratorical skills were
said to rival those of William Jennings Bryan and who delivered a long address in praise of Jesuit education. In his own
remarks, Gasson referred to the property (apparently for
the first time) as “University Heights,” and the name would
stick. The evening concluded with fireworks.
“Having reduced the debt on the land,” Gasson wrote,
s um m e r 2012 v b c m

27

The Maginnis and Walsh grand plan, 1909. Commonwealth Avenue is at right. Present-day College Road appears near the top.

“we began to devote our energies to the raising of a fund for
the building.” But in fact Gasson had an additional item on
his agenda: redrawing the boundary line between Boston
and Newton. The postal address of the Lawrence farm was
Chestnut Hill. This was not an official town entity; rather, it
was an informal district that straddled the border of the two
municipalities. Most of the new campus lay on the Newton
side of the line, the “suburbs,” as Gasson had noted. Hoping
to retain the close identification of the college with the city,
he submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature to
adjust the border so that the campus would be entirely within the limits of Boston. “All the traditions of Boston College
are connected to Boston,” he told a newspaper reporter, and
he maintained (not entirely correctly), “Existing boundary
lines between the two cities are indistinct.” A bill was filed,
and early in 1910 Gasson attended a hearing at the State
House at which Newton officials voiced their objections. If
the plan went ahead, they testified, Newton would not be
able to widen Beacon Street or South Street (later called
College Road), and each of those projects was “a necessary
improvement.” At the same time, the suburb would have to
maintain other roads in the area, all “for the benefit of this
territory” that would no longer belong to it. Considerable
expense had already gone into constructing drainage and
sewers, and if the land went to Boston, Newton would have
essentially given the metropolis those services for free.
The bill was given “leave to withdraw” from the legislature without being put to a vote. It was a rare occasion when
Gasson, who also testified, lost a debate.
28

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

I

n the fall of 1908, Gasson went on a tour through
“most of the leading colleges of the south and west,”
as he recounted it, to inspect their architecture. This
was an era of extensive construction on American
college and university campuses. Schools everywhere—public and private, old and new—were beginning
to think about the aesthetic their buildings and green space
presented to the world. Woodrow Wilson, then the president of Princeton, was remaking his campus into what he
called a “little commonwealth of our own.” Closer to home,
Harvard was reaching beyond its “yard,” aggressively buying local property in pursuit of what one scoffing alumnus
called a “constructed utopia.” Gasson returned from his trip
reportedly impressed with the collegiate gothic architecture
and campus of the University of Chicago, built (mostly with
John D. Rockefeller’s money) over the preceding decade.
He continued to visit the property at the Heights regularly,
sometimes bringing students along as a way of sustaining
their enthusiasm. On one occasion, playing to this audience,
he announced that “a modern gymnasium” would be “one
of the first structures,” although that was never his intent.
There were few Jesuit traditions in America pertaining
to campus architecture. The Society’s institutional buildings
generally took such style as they had from whatever local
designers were available. Knowing that the commission to
build the new Boston College might be a very lucrative one,
Gasson and the trustees decided to open it to competition. A
committee of four Jesuits (including J. Havens Richards, SJ,
the former president of Georgetown) was appointed, joined
photograph: Courtesy John J. Burns Library Archive

by four local professional men. These latter included an
architect (who took himself out of competition), a building
contractor, and a landscape architect who had previously
worked with Frederick Law Olmsted. Together they drew
up a 20-page prospectus, “Arrangement of Buildings and
Grounds for Boston College.” Gasson was new to this business, and sometimes it showed. After sending a preliminary
inquiry to one potential applicant, he got a starchy letter
in reply. “The best architects,” this principal at the Boston
firm of Peabody and Stearns told him, expected a small fee
in advance—or else they would be investing their time and
money on “the hope” of a win, as on “a horse in a horse
race.” The committee agreed to pay $250 (later increased
to $300) to invited competitors. The winner would receive
$1,000 and, more importantly, the right to go ahead with
the project.
The prospectus described a campus of interrelated buildings, but the focus was to be initially on a “Recitation
Building.” The name says something about how teaching and learning were expected to proceed at the college:
Students would be presented with their lessons, and they’d

should be at a minimum “as good as in the Charlestown
High School.”
The Recitation Building was to be just the beginning.
Other edifices “will probably be built within the next two
years,” and still others “from time to time as funds are
available and as conditions require.” A “Faculty Building,”
for instance, would be needed sooner rather than later so
that the Jesuits would not have to commute daily from
their residence in the South End. A free-standing library
was described, capable of holding 200,000 volumes but
expandable to three times that number; it would be “open
to all students, all members of the Faculty, and for the public
in general with some restrictions.” Additional classroom
buildings might include a “Hall of Philosophy,” together
with separate buildings for chemistry, physics, and biology,
each with laboratories. Six “houses of retreat” were called
for, each to hold 100 students. The intent of these is unclear.
They may have been for use during the two- and three-day
religious retreats that were required of students, or they
may have been meant for longer residencies. To fulfill the
college’s religious needs, there would be a chapel in the

contributions, mostly $10 or less, came quickly and were recorded in
gasson’s own hand. mrs. mary dyer, “a poor widow,” gave the first dollar.

be required to recite them back. This central facility, three
stories high, was to have 10 classrooms capable of seating
40 students each, and three more that could hold 70. Three
assembly halls were included: a large one with movable seats
on the first floor (“the main feature of the plan”); a smaller
one “to be used for debating societies, etc.”; and a third “with
benches, after the manner of a Senate Chamber.” (This
last was probably intended to resemble the British House
of Commons, with benches facing off along two opposing
walls.) A library with shelf space for 10,000 volumes was
featured and, adjacent to it, four rooms where “teachers rest
between class exercises.” Anticipating the winter months,
there would have to be some kind of coatroom for the students, though “the Trustees express a preference for the
locker system.” Finally, there would be three offices with
attendant waiting rooms, for the president, the prefect of
discipline, and the registrar; the president’s office would
have a fireplace. Toilets, janitors’ closets, and other practical
necessities would have to be factored in.
The building should be designed so that its space could
later be expanded by 50 percent, but there was to be nothing
temporary about it. “The arrangements,” the specifications
concluded, apparently citing a well-known local model,

faculty house; a separate student chapel (“without ‘luxury of
space’—The services will be relatively short”); and a larger
church building, open to the general public and seating
1,500. This might best be located, the planners thought,
on “the margins of the property, by which the public may
enter freely without trespassing too far within the precincts
of the College.” Finally, there would indeed be a student
gymnasium (“Use Brookline Gymnasium as a model”) with
an elevated running track, a “swimming tank,” and six bowling alleys. This would be adjacent to an athletic field with a
quarter-mile oval, a football field, a baseball field (“carefully
placed with regard to sun”), 10 tennis courts, and grandstands for 10,000 fans.
The specifications were distributed in early January 1909,
and submissions were due by mid-March, with a decision to
be announced a month later. At least one applicant thought
the timing “rather short,” considering “the season of the year
which does not admit of too intimate a survey of the site.”
Even so, 13 proposals came in, and on April 12 the judges
made their decision: A relatively new firm, Maginnis and
Walsh of Boston, took first place. The firm’s senior partner,
Charles Donagh Maginnis, an immigrant from Northern
Ireland, had worked on a number of Catholic church and
s um m e r 2012 v b c m

29

G

round was
officially broken for the
Recitation
Building on
June 19, 1909, a Saturday. The
Boston Herald reported that
from noon until nearly midnight, an estimated 30,000
people flocked to the property.
Similar to the garden party
of the year before, this event
featured rides, games, music,
fireworks, and, as a special
draw, according to the Globe,
“exhibitions of . . . skill” by
“a group of Indians and cow
boys from the 101 Ranch Wild
West Show.” At the end of the
afternoon, the formal ceremony began, and the Globe noted
its “purely civic character”
In this “early 20th-century” view shot by professional photographer Clifton Church, the Recitation
(meaning there was no Mass
Building stands alone.
or religious service). A professor from the University of
Notre Dame delivered a salute
chapel commissions. In 1899, he won the commission for
to Jesuit education. Edward Burns, an alumnus of the Class
the chapel at Saint John’s Seminary in Brighton. He had
of 1880, read “Our Mother’s House,” a poem he wrote
some strong ideas about how religious structures should be
for the occasion. Then Gasson stepped forward carrying a
adapted to the American context: Not every local church, he
shovel adorned with ribbons (red, white, and blue; maroon
held, had to look like Chartres. The firm he formed with his
and gold). “The sod was tough from the trampling of many
friend Timothy Walsh in 1905 would became the country’s
feet,” a reporter wrote, and Gasson “had to take off his cuffs
foremost designer of church-related facilities in the first half
and stop to wipe his brow several times,” playing, perhaps,
of the 20th century, with collegiate commissions at Holy
to his audience. Other dignitaries took their turns, including
Cross, Fordham, Notre Dame, and elsewhere.
the mayors of Boston and Newton.
Although virtually none of the winning design was ever
At that moment, Gasson and his fellow Jesuits probably
built as planned, Maginnis’s vision established expectations
did not appreciate how much money would be needed to
for the campus among alumni, students, and friends of the
erect the first building (more than $200,000), or how long
college over the succeeding decades. His design covered
the construction would take. As before, their fundraising
the entire property, north to south (Commonwealth to
plan relied on amassing small contributions, a method that
Beacon) and west to east (present-day College Road to the
took time. Money was often tight, and with “frequent delays
cliff). In it, a main gate led from Commonwealth Avenue
in the shipment of building material,” reported the Stylus,
to the Recitation Building (what now is called Gasson
progress was slow. Several times, the project came to a
Hall), which, on paper, was shaped like a fat H and was surhalt. The initial design was scaled back and the building’s
mounted by a low stump of a tower. Both sides of the enterfootprint shrank, though its tower was raised to a more
ing roadway were crowded, with two buildings to the right
impressive height.
and four to the left, one of them a massive public church.
All the while, photographs of the construction site ran
Additional structures were fitted between the Recitation
regularly in the Stylus and in local newspapers. In May
Building and the athletic fields, which hugged Beacon Street.
1910, students expressed their hope of attending classes at
A landscaped plaza east of the Recitation Building extended
Chestnut Hill by the start of the 1911–12 school year, but
to the cliff edge, offering a view of the city. The unifying
that did not happen. By September 1912, a finished buildstyle was collegiate gothic.
ing seemed at last in sight. “Everything points now to the
30

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

photograph: Courtesy John J. Burns Library Archive

The occupation: In late March 1913, seniors converge on what they will informally call “the tower building.”

possibility of transferring the classes [to the new location]
shortly after Easter,” a student wrote in Stylus. The windows were in place, and interior decoration was underway.
Francis Schroen, a Jesuit brother whose murals adorned
the walls of Georgetown, Fordham, and other Jesuit properties (including the original school building in the South
End), was busy painting in the main assembly hall and the
adjacent rotunda. Blackboards had been installed, and the
debating room on the third floor was ready.
On Friday, March 28, 1913, a sizeable contingent of the
43-member senior class “occupied” (as they put it) the building. “New College informally opened,” a Jesuit chronicler
recorded tersely that day, noting that Gasson and members of the faculty “went out, met the students (senior)” at
Chestnut Hill. Gathering in the South End, the students
had taken the streetcar to its terminus near the reservoirs
and then marched up the hill. Accompanied by Gasson,
they entered the new building. “Members of the class of
1913,” Gasson proclaimed, rising to the occasion, “we now,
in an informal way, take possession of this noble building,
for the greater glory of God—for the cultivation of true
knowledge—for the development of general science—for
the constant study of those ideals which make for sound
personal integrity and for lofty civic uprighteousness [sic].”
The date was significant—just four days short of 50 years
after the governor had signed the legislation incorporating
Boston College.
The students fanned out through the building, examining it from top to bottom. They were permitted to choose
a classroom that would be theirs, and they selected “a big,
sunny room” on the southeast side. “Classes went on,” the
Jesuit chronicler noted. William Brett, SJ, conducted his
lesson in ethics, and afterward classes in psychology and

theology resumed where they had left off in the South End
the day before. Instruction for seniors continued in the new
building until the end of the year, though some adjustments
in the schedule were needed. Equipment for the small chemistry lab had not yet arrived, so students had to return to the
old school building one day a week for their experiments. By
the time of the formal cornerstone ceremony on June 15 and
the first Commencement exercises on the grounds, June 18,
the faculty and seniors had taken full possession of the new
campus. Starting the following September, all college-level
classes were conducted at Chestnut Hill.
Thomas Gasson would not remain at Boston College to
see more campus buildings constructed (St. Mary’s Hall in
1917, Bapst Library in 1922, Devlin Hall in 1924). He left
Boston in January 1914, bound, according to one Boston
paper, for “the Society’s rest-house” in Maryland. Later,
assignments would take him to Georgetown University, to
Rome, to a retreat house on Staten Island, and to Loyola
College in Montreal. He was 70 years old when he died in
that city, in 1930.
“It was the boast of Augustus,” a Jesuit eulogist wrote,
“that he found Rome brick and left it marble.” Fr. Gasson,
the remembrance continued, “found Boston College a dark,
uninviting building, in an obscure location, little more than
an appendage of the Church of the Immaculate Conception.”
He left it with one grand building, plans for more, and
expectations of a campus that would “be unrivalled.” One
suspects that Gasson would have enjoyed being likened to a
Roman emperor. n
James O’Toole ’72, Ph.D.’87, is the University’s Clough Millennium
Professor of History and the author of The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America (2008). He is currently at work on a book-length history
of Boston College.

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

31

32

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Early risers
Four young Boston College scientists are among those
honored this year by the Sloan Foundation
By J.M. Berger

Each year 126 U.S. and Canadian scholars in the early stages of their careers
are awarded Sloan fellowships, in recognition of work that shows “promise of
making fundamental contributions to new knowledge.” The recipients—nearly
all scientists, together with a few mathematicians and economists—receive
$50,000 to help support their research at the university or institute where
they are employed. In announcing the 2012 recipients, the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation named an unprecedented four members of the Boston College faculty: Michelle Meyer (biology), Ying Ran (physics), Dunwei Wang (chemistry),
and Liane Young (psychology). These scientists join 14 previous Sloan fellows
at Boston College, including, most recently, Sara Cordes (psychology, 2010)
and Kian Tan (chemistry, 2011).
Many early-career prizes are like “beauty awards,” says Larry McLaughlin,
the University’s vice provost for research. “How beautiful is your CV, and
have you worked with the right people?” The Sloan fellowships, he says, are
based on the “actual work” junior faculty have accomplished. For a look at
the ongoing work of the University’s new Sloan fellows, read on.

Bacterial agent
Biologist Michelle Meyer came
to Boston College in 2010
from Yale University, where
she was a post-doctoral fellow
with a Ph.D. in biochemistry
and molecular biophysics from
Caltech. Her research focuses
Meyer, in her Higgins Hall lab.
on the biological molecule
RNA—specifically, on the
interaction between RNA and
proteins, the workhorse molecules that play a part in virtually
all bodily processes at the cellular level. Just 15 years ago, says Meyer, RNA was mainly
knowledge of the linkages between RNA and proteins will
thought of as a “messenger,” a molecule that transferred
lead to the design of drugs that, owing to a compatible
genetic instructions from DNA to other parts of a cell. More
molecular configuration, will bind to the RNA of harmful
recently, researchers have learned that RNA also performs a
bacterial strains and incapacitate them, without disrupting
complex role in regulating processes within cells, including
beneficial bacteria.
not only the production of proteins—called gene expresMeyer and her team are also developing new RNA, in
sion—but also how much of a protein is made (a form of
an effort to understand how RNA molecules with differ“resource prioritization,” Meyer says). It is now known that
ent physical structures perform similar biological funcif RNA doesn’t function properly, a host of processes can go
tions. Meyer creates artificial environments in petri dishes
haywire within cells.
and other media that force microorganisms to mutate
Meyer studies the RNA of bacteria, partly because, as she
and evolve rapidly in limited and specific ways. She hopes
notes, the human body is mostly made up of such singlethat by studying how RNA functions under varied cellular
cell organisms (in fact, microbial cells outnumber human
conditions she can better understand the factors driving
cells in the body by about 10 to one). She and her team are
natural evolution.
attempting to identify previously unknown strains of bacte“What excites me the most about this work is the power
rial RNA in the body and to determine the proteins they
of evolutionary forces and the incredible flexibility of RNA,”
control. Her work mines data recently assembled by the
Meyer says. “There are many potential answers to the bioNational Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project,
logical need to regulate gene expression, and nature has
which sequenced the genomic DNA of bacteria taken from
identified many of them. . . . I want to know, ‘how did nature
the healthy bodies of human volunteers. Within these DNA
solve this problem?’”
sequences, Meyer looks for specific patterns indicating that
a functional RNA is encoded. While much of Meyer’s work
involves computational analysis, she also performs laboratory experiments to examine the biological functions of the
RNAs she finds spelled out genetically. These experiments
involve synthesizing the RNAs and testing whether they
bind to purified proteins in the test-tube, as well as studying
the RNAs while they are inside bacteria by modifying their
genes. Meyer’s research is exploratory; ultimately, expanded
34

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Super matter

assistants to help with the mathematical testing of his ideas,
including the study of “fractional quantum hall physics
in solid state materials in the absence of magnetic field,”
which, he says, is “a somewhat new direction” in condensed
matter physics.
At the most fundamental level, Ran aims to understand
what gives materials their unique combination of properties. “There are many, many motivations” for getting into
science, he says, “but the central motivation is curiosity.”

A physicist with a doctorate from MIT, Ying Ran studies
the universe at the subatomic, or quantum, level, where
strange effects are found that run counter to our common
understanding of the physical world. At the subatomic level,
the location and behavior of objects cannot be described
concretely, and physicists must deal in probabilities.
Continuing an interest he pursued as a researcher at the
University of California, Berkeley, Ran, who joined the
Boston College faculty in 2010, specializes in quantum
condensed matter theory. He seeks to figure out how subatomic effects might be used to create super-materials, types
of matter with properties not necessarily found in nature.
For instance, Ran’s research probes the properties of theoretical materials that would conduct heat but not electricity,
a combination of characteristics never seen before.
Ran works primarily in the realm of mathematics.
Dunwei Wang earned his Ph.D. at Stanford and held a postWhiteboards covered in brightly colored equations line
doctoral fellowship at Caltech before joining the Boston
his office. Among his particular interests are “frustrated
College chemistry department in 2007, where he researches
magnets.” In a conventional magnet, atoms are arranged
the harvesting, storage, and transmission of renewable enerin a square grid, as on a sheet of graph paper. With each
gies. Wang is developing new materials at nanoscale that
atom aligned in orderly fashion, the magnetic poles point
he hopes will help break the hold of nonrenewable fossil
north-south in a well-defined pattern. But change the atomic
fuel energy sources. In 2011, he won a National Science
structure of the magnet, make the squares of the graph into
Foundation career award, which supports young scientists
triangles, Ran says, and you confuse the magnetic fields.
in their research.
Some fields may point north, some south, and some may be
One line of Wang’s work involves the design and fabrendered unpredictable.
Ran’s theoretical explorations could someday have
practical applications—in the
development of, say, superconductors that can be put to
use in high-powered computers. Certain types of superconductors are valuable because
electricity flows through them
without resistance, making
the computer both faster and
more energy-efficient. But to
function well superconductors
have to be kept at temperatures
in the vicinity of minus 300
degrees Fahrenheit. The kinds
of theoretical materials Ran
imagines could someday allow
for room temperature superconductors.
With the funding from his
Sloan fellowship, Ran says he
Ran, in a Higgins Hall classroom.
intends to hire post-doctoral

Transformers

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

35

rication of intricate silicon-based nanowire structures for
collecting solar energy. His goal is to achieve a higher rate
of energy collection than that of the more conventional
crystalline silicon-based photovoltaic cells. In line with this
project he is also developing silicon nano arrays to transport
the captured energy more efficiently.
A second avenue of investigation underway in Wang’s
Merkert Chemistry Center laboratory focuses on achieving
cost-effective solar-powered “water splitting,” a process in
which water molecules are separated into their components,
oxygen and hydrogen, the latter being a clean-burning, sustainable fuel.
Wang described these efforts in the March 28 issue of
the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Using a process
known as atomic layer deposition (ALD), he and his associates created molecule-thick wafers of hematite, a common
form of iron oxide that is naturally sensitive to light. The
wafers were placed in water, and the displacement of electrons when light hit the hematite caused hydrogen to separate from oxygen. The plentiful supply of hematite in nature
and the encouraging results with the ALD wafer suggest
further work in this vein.
Wang’s research also extends to development of a more
efficient lithium-ion battery. Working at the nano scale, he
is in the process of fabricating an anode, or electron receptor, with a recharge rate at least five times that of current
lithium-ion anodes.
During his three years at Boston College, Wang has been
awarded six patents for his solar water-splitting and battery

designs. Typically, says Larry McLaughlin, a patent application makes several claims to unique technology, which are
almost always rejected by the patent office for not being
sufficiently different from existing designs. Applicants then
re-apply, submitting arguments to defend their claims.
Wang’s application for one of his anode designs made 22
claims and came back with 20 of them approved in the first
round, McLaughlin says.

Moral compass

Liane Young first encountered the Trolley Problem as an
undergraduate philosophy major at Harvard: A trolley is on
course to hit five people. Would you throw a switch to put
it on a track to strike only one person? The choice is easy
for most individuals: Save the five and sacrifice the one.
But what if the solution calls for a more personal intervention? Would you, say, push a man off a bridge into the trolley’s path, so that the trolley will stop before it hits the five
people? For most individuals, the answer is no, even though
the outcome, numerically, is the same.
Young seeks to understand the social and biological
motivations behind moral judgment—what she calls moral
intuition. It’s a quest that led
her to cognitive psychology
(her Ph.D. field at Harvard)
and to neuroscience. She was
a post-doctoral associate in
MIT’s department of brain and
cognitive sciences for three
years before coming to Boston
College in 2011.
Using magnetic technologies, Young examines what
happens in the brain as people
make moral decisions. She first
stimulates a specific part of the
brain using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This
temporarily and locally disrupts
normal processes. Then she
uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track how this disWang (right), in his lab in the Merkert Chemistry Center, with Ph.D. student Rui Liu.
ruption affects the mental work
36

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Here and now

Young, in her McGuinn Hall “morality lab.”

of moral judgment. For example, in an experiment that
Young conducted with researchers at MIT and published
in April 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, volunteer subjects received TMS to the brain’s
right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ)—above and behind
the right ear. They were then asked to evaluate a scenario
with several variables: A woman puts a white powder in her
friend’s coffee, for example, thinking it’s poison, and it turns
out to be sugar; or it is poison, and it kills him.
The results suggested that disrupting the RTPJ caused
subjects to judge the would-be poisoner less harshly if
the powder was sugar and no harm was done. In other
words, without a fully functioning RTPJ, test subjects tend
to base their judgments more on outcomes than intentions.
Although the RTPJ has emerged as an area of special interest
in Young’s research, she and her team are investigating other
parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, where
MRI scans indicate some moral decision-making activity.
“For a while now, I’ve been really interested in moral
intuitions and where they come from—and the extent to
which people share these intuitions,” Young says. “When
someone has a different set of intuitions, how do you know
who’s right?”

This year’s awarding of four
Sloan early-career awards
places Boston College in rare
company. Only eight of the 51
schools with a 2012 Sloan fellow can claim more: Caltech,
Harvard, UCLA, University of
Chicago, Columbia, Stanford,
University of Texas at Austin,
and Yale.
Asked to explain Boston
College’s showing, Arts and
Sciences dean David Quigley
notes that while the number
of Sloan grants in 2012 “was
dramatic, it wasn’t surprising.
A policy of going after the best
young scientists we can find
has been a priority for some
time, supported by tens of millions of dollars invested in facilities improvements, new
faculty positions, and research support for those faculty.”
And, Quigley adds, the city of Boston holds intrinsic
appeal. “People who study for doctorates tend to meet and
marry other academic hard-chargers,” he says; the prospect
of living in an “international center of technology, medicine,
finance, law, and academe becomes a highly attractive selling point” in the midst of a two-person job search.
In the past 15 or so years, Quigley says, the departments
of psychology, mathematics, and biology have “leaped into
the big time, just as chemistry and physics did before them,
and this has been noticed by ambitious young scientists.”
He cites a recent search to fill two positions in mathematics. The University had assumed it would lose several prime
candidates to other institutions and so made offers to
four—and all four mathematicians accepted. “Fortunately,”
Quigley says, “we had some retirements coming.” n
J.M. Berger is a writer in the Boston area.
“Sloan Rangers,” an @BC audio slideshow featuring Meyer,
Ran, Wang, and Young, may be viewed via Full Story at www.
bc.edu/bcm.

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

37

CONT E NT S
38 Way station

The first last lunch
40 You had to be there

C21
Notes

The lost humor of Jesus

Way station
By Thomas Cooper
The first last lunch

“H

i, i ’ m bill, and i ’ m a member
of the Iowa-Nebraska Luncheon
Club.” So began the introductions at a
lunch held May 7 in the Francis Thompson
Room of the Burns Library. “Bill,” sitting
at one end of a long table, was William
Neenan, SJ, vice president and special
assistant to the President of Boston
College. At the other end sat John T.
Butler, SJ (“Fr. Jack”), vice president for
University Mission and Ministry. Seated
between them along either side of the table
were five young women and seven young
men who would be graduating in exactly
two weeks. The Thompson Room is
imposing, with a wall of towering stained
glass windows, a vast Oriental rug, and
ornate wooden bookcases housing leatherbound tomes, but the mood was informal,
and the students were casually dressed, it
being, in fact, a pre-exam study day.
The noontime gathering was the idea
of Karen Kiefer ’82, associate director
of the University’s Church in the 21st

38

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Century Center, which cosponsored the
lunch with the Office of Mission and
Ministry. A chance reminiscence with
Mary Caliendo Rather ’82, her college
roommate, got Kiefer thinking about
“the number of students who go through
Boston College without getting to know
either of these two men.” She e-mailed
the senior class, inviting all to sign up
for the chance to win “one last lunch
before graduation with two of Boston
College’s living legends.” Within a day,
there were 140 applications. Kiefer wrote
out the names on strips of paper and
put them in a box, and Neenan drew 12.
The winners hailed from throughout the
University—five from the Carroll School
of Management, one from the Lynch
School of Education, and six from the
College of Arts and Sciences—and from
around the country (Colorado, Georgia,
Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New
York, Pennsylvania, and Texas).
Neenan believes in the power of lunch-

Table for 14 in the Thompson Room, with Fr. Butler at left and Fr. Neenan at right.

es, having founded the Iowa-Nebraska
Luncheon Club (he is a native of Sioux
City, Iowa) in 1981 as a way to provide
Midwestern students an occasion to
gather with others who root for the same
sports teams and speak the same language.
He has since helped launch 14 additional
regional support groups, from the Peach
Club (a secessionist offshoot of the Pecan
Club) and the Sooners to the Salmon Club
(Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Montana)
and the Rocky Mountain Club.
This gathering began with a prayer led
by Neenan: “Life is a journey. . . . This is
a way station; we ask that You walk with
them as they walk with You.” Lunch was
a buffet of sandwiches, salads, chips, soft
drinks, and Boston cream pie. Over the
rustlings of sandwich wrappers and bags
of chips, Neenan and Butler spurred the
conversation, asking the seniors to share
a particular memory from their four years
on the Heights.
A number of recollections concerned

photograph: Caitlin Cunningham

sporting events—Andrew Steichen, a
finance and accounting major (headed for
an investment firm), remembered being
in the stands at Conte Forum his freshman year when the Eagles beat Duke in
basketball.
Seth Woody, a theology major (with
a double minor in faith, peace, and justice and environmental studies) who will
spend the coming year as a monastic
intern at an Episcopal monastery across
the river in Cambridge, cited the view
from the top of St. Mary’s Hall, “seeing
all the way into Boston.” Grace Horner, a
French and environmental studies major
who has joined a nonprofit social justice
advocacy organization in Denver, and
Tyler Schenk, who majored in finance and
marketing and now works for UBS, both
mentioned the Dustbowl—the grassy
expanse between McElroy Commons
and Fulton Hall that will be reduced and
reconfigured by the construction of Stokes
Hall—drawing nods from others around

the table. Schenk recalled walking across
the wide-open space at 4:00 a.m. as a
freshman. “It was totally quiet; that’s when
I started liking being here.”
At a pause in the conversation, Butler
asked Neenan if it would be okay to make
the students do some work for their meal
(to which Neenan deadpanned, “Well,
they’re going to have to wash the dishes”).
In a few days, Butler told the seniors,
“You will become trustees, as it were.” He
wanted to hear what each of them thought
the school did well and where it needed
“to step up, to improve.”
The ensuing conversation ranged
widely, but several subjects recurred.
Matthew Vigliotta, a political science
and philosophy major (headed for a
tech start-up in New York), praised the
University’s efforts at “educating the
whole person—mind, body, and spirit,”
from the core curriculum to “the presence of the Scriptures,” and he cited the
Jesuit concept of cura personalis (care for

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

39

the whole person). Woody, referring to
the recent deaths­—unrelated—of two
students (Franco Garcia ’12 and Michael
Gannon ’14), said the school is “great at
community, at mourning and grief and the
celebration of death.” Boston College, he
added, “handles these things with grace.”
Another student echoed this saying, “You
never feel like you’re not cared about,
especially in times of need.”
Others commented that they liked
the open presence of religion at Boston
College. “In high school, we tiptoed
around religion,” said Sarah Wickman, a
marketing major with a minor in human
development who will join a social media
company. Christine Miecuna, an accounting and marketing major, agreed, but
added, “Religion is not forced on you.”
A couple of students, including Wickman,
praised the opportunities for reflection offered by programs such as 48
Hours, Kairos, and Arrupe International
Immersion. “The school thrives on its
volunteer opportunities,” commented
biology major Tom Murphy.
when the discussion turned to
areas needing improvement, these same
spheres reappeared along with new ideas.
Four students mentioned a need for more
opportunities to participate in the fully
subscribed programming of Kairos, 48
Hours (designed for first-year students),
and Arrupe International Immersion. John
Kelly, an accounting and theology major
who went on a Kairos retreat as a senior,
said for many students it is “easily one of
their best weekends here” and provides
an important network. “It can be hard as a
freshman to find a community,” said Kelly,
who will join DeLoitte in the fall.
The disconnect between students’ daytime and nighttime lives concerned a number of the seniors at the table. English and
philosophy major Aaron Staudinger, who
was a resident assistant in Walsh Hall,
said that students have “a great ability to
go to class and volunteer” and then, come
Friday night, “completely forget” that side
of themselves. He wanted more effort
expended on building a sense that “you are
this person all the time, not just Monday
through Friday, nine to five.” Matthew
Vigliotta noted that it’s important to
“grab hold of [students] early.”

40

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Andrew Steichen asked Fr. Neenan
how a Jesuit institution such as Boston
College deals with the high cost of education, which poses an obstacle for many
who aspire to college. Neenan replied
that the University remains committed
to its need blind admission policy and to
meeting the full need of students through
grants and loans. One goal of the current
capital campaign, he noted, is to increase
the endowment and “take the pressure
off tuition as a contributor to financial aid

funding.” He went on to say that “Boston
College is poised to be a national and
international leader,” adding, “and Ignatius
would say, ‘Go for it’.”
Before offering a closing prayer—“We
ask You to continue to bless them for they
have blessed us”—Butler thanked and
praised the students for their comments
and their critiques. “It’s a messy world
with messy answers,” he said, “but as long
as you keep asking the questions, we’ll
move forward.” n

You had to be there
By James Martin, SJ

The lost humor of Jesus

I

recently asked some distinguished New Testament scholars
about Jesus and humor. The Gospels show
Jesus as clever and articulate, but there are
few moments in the New Testament that
strike readers today as funny. Wouldn’t
it make sense that, if the men who wrote
the Gospels wanted to portray Jesus as an
appealing figure, they would highlight his
sense of humor?
So why is there so little humor from
Jesus in the Gospels? I put that question to
Amy-Jill Levine, a New Testament scholar
at Vanderbilt University and the author of
The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the
Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2006). Her book
holds that Christian preachers often misrepresent Jesus’s words and deeds because
they fail to understand the Jewish context
in which he lived.
Levine pointed out that what was
seen as funny to people living during
Jesus’s time may not seem funny to us
at all. Most likely, she said, for someone
in first-century Palestine, “the parables
were amusing in their exaggeration or
hyperbole. For example, the idea that a
mustard seed would have sprouted into a
big bush that birds would build their nests
in would have been humorous.” Indeed,
the very incongruity of the parables—the
topsy-turvy, seemingly absurd nature of

their message (the poor are rich; the rich
are poor; the blind see; the sighted are
blind)—is the stuff of comedy. The absurdity is even richer when listeners realize
that Jesus’s insights are, in fact, true.
In his book Laughing with God: Humor,
Culture, and Transformation (2008), Gerald
Arbuckle, a Marist priest, agrees. In firstcentury Palestine, he suggests, people
most likely would have laughed at many
of Jesus’s intentionally ridiculous illustrations—at, for example, the idea that someone would light a lamp and put it under
a basket, or that a person would build a
house on sand, or that a father would give
a child stones instead of bread.
“Humor is very culture-bound,”
Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, professor of
New Testament at Boston College, tells
me. Fr. Harrington illustrates with the
story in Mark of the “Gerasene demoniac,”
in which Jesus cures a man possessed by a
“legion” of demons—“an obvious shot at
the Roman occupiers,” notes Harrington—
then dispatches the demons “into a herd
of pigs, [which are unclean for Jews], and
they jump off a cliff and drown in the sea.”
“The Gospels have a lot of controversy
stories and honor-shame situations,”
Harrington continues. He points to the
debate, narrated in Mark, over “paying taxes to Caesar” for example. As

Harrington relates, the issue “is identified
as a ‘trap’ from the beginning,” laid by
temple priests, Pharisees, and Herodians.
With his response (“Give to the emperor
the things that are the emperor’s, and to
God the things that are God’s”), Jesus
emerges with his “reputation for great
wisdom intact (honored) and his opponents frustrated (shamed).”
“I suspect,” says Fr. Harrington, “that
the early readers found these stories hilarious, whereas we in a very different social
setting miss the point entirely.” Let me
repeat that: hilarious.
It’s hard to imagine a good storyteller—or an itinerant preacher, as Jesus
was—who doesn’t appreciate the value of
humor. Jesus undoubtedly knew he had to
“grab” his listeners, attract them quickly
through a funny story, a clever parable,
or a humorous aside. If one knows where
to look, the Gospels reveal a man with a
great sense of joy and playfulness.
Take the parable of the talents, found
in both Matthew and Luke, in which a

wealthy man entrusts his servants with
money for safekeeping before he sets off
on a journey. To one servant he gives five
talents, to another two talents, and, to a
third, one talent. After a time the rich man
returns. The first servant, he discovers,
has invested the money wisely and has
made five more talents, which pleases his
master. The second has made two talents
over the two he had been given. The third,
however, has not invested the money at
all and merely returns the one talent. He is
punished for his lack of industry. This parable is often invoked by preachers today
to illustrate the need to use our “talents” in
life to the full; Jesus himself drew that serious lesson from the story.
But for the listeners of the day, there
would have been an element of the absurd
in the story, as well, for a talent was the
equivalent of a worker’s daily wages for 15
years. The idea of a wealthy man handing
over to a servant 75 years worth of wages
would have touched the sense of the ridiculous in his hearers.

Besides the parables, there are other
indications that Jesus of Nazareth was a
joyful person. At one point in the Gospel
of Matthew, Jesus observes that he is
being castigated by some critics for not
being as serious as John the Baptist. “John
came neither eating nor drinking and they
say, ‘He is a demon’; the Son of Man came
eating and drinking,” says Jesus, “and they
say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard’.” In
this way, the Gospel records criticism of
Jesus for being high-spirited.
Moreover, Jesus embraced individuals who demonstrated a sense of humor.
In the beginning of the Gospel of John
comes the remarkable story of Nathanael,
who has been told by his friends that the
Messiah is from Nazareth. Nathanael
responds, “Can anything good come out
of Nazareth?”
This is a joke about how insignificant
the town was. Nazareth was a backwater
where only a few families lived.
And what does Jesus do? Does he castigate Nathanael for mocking his home-

Nathanael (resting on one elbow) under a fig tree as Jesus (in white) approaches, depicted by French artist James Tissot.

painting: James Tissot/SuperStock

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

41

town? One might expect the dour Jesus
of modern imagination to say, “You who
condemn the small town will yourself be
condemned!”
Jesus says nothing like that. Nathanael’s
humor doesn’t bother him at all. In fact,
it seems to delight him. “Here is truly an
Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” he
says. In other words, here is someone he
can trust. Nathanael becomes one of the
apostles. Jesus’s welcoming of Nathanael
into his circle is perhaps the clearest indication that he had a sense of humor. It
also indicates that John, the writer of the
Gospel, appreciated a humorous story
enough to preserve it in his narrative.
St. Peter is another Gospel figure
often portrayed in ways that can be seen
as comic. To begin with, like many of the
disciples, he repeatedly misunderstands
Jesus’s message, which leads to some arguably comic moments, even in the most
serious of situations. At the Last Supper,
when Jesus washes the feet of the disciples
as a symbol of the way in which his followers must treat one another (in humble
service), Peter balks. “You will never wash
my feet,” he exclaims. Jesus replies that if
he cannot bear to have his feet washed,
then he will have no place in his ministry.
A somewhat uncomprehending Peter
shouts, “Lord, not my feet only but also
my hands and my head!” One can imagine
Jesus smiling inwardly at Peter’s bluster
and thinking, “Well, that’s not exactly
what I meant.”
Peter bursts with enthusiasm. His rashness—by turns charming, touching, and
sometimes funny­—leads him early in the
Gospels to ask Jesus to command him to
walk on water after he sees Jesus doing
the same on the Sea of Galilee: “Lord, if
it is you, command me to come to you on
the water.” Jesus does just that. So Peter
enthusiastically jumps out of the boat
(perhaps to the astonishment of the rest of
the disciples on board), finds that he can
in fact walk on water, and then promptly
sinks. “Lord, save me!” he cries. Jesus then
reaches out his hand to save his impetuous
friend.
professor levine notes that
there is no way of knowing for certain
whether instances of Jesus’s humor were
expunged from the Gospels by the early

42

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Church. But she points out that in many
of the noncanonical Gospels—those not
officially accepted by the early Church—
there are several occasions on which Jesus
laughs.
Levine says the early Church Fathers
(the major Christian theologians of the
early centuries) were, in general, focused
on combating heresy, which was no laughing matter. They would probably have
seen the genre of humor as inappropriate
for their times, and thus downplayed it.
Hugo Rahner, a German Jesuit theologian (like his more famous brother, Karl),
wrote a wonderful little book in 1967
called Man at Play, which traces the notion
of playfulness in Greek, Roman, and early
Christian thought. His work underlines
how early Church leaders consciously
moved away from humor. St. Paul,
for example, wrote in his Letter to the
Ephesians that they must avoid any talk
that is “silly.” In the early third century,
St. Clement of Alexandria warned against
“humorous and unbecoming words.”
In the late fourth century, St. Ambrose
said “joking should be avoided even in
small talk,” and St. Basil maintained that
Christians “ought not to laugh nor even to
suffer laugh makers.”
However, St. Augustine, a student
of Ambrose, recommended some joking

Coming events
September 20 » Women in Interreligious Dialogue
A talk by Rosemary Radford Ruether, the Carpenter Emerita Professor of Feminist
Theology at the Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union.
October 1 » Handing on the Faith
A talk by Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, emeritus of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and
Minneapolis.
October 16 » Catholic Spiritual Practices: A Treasury of Old and New
Book launch and lecture by Colleen Griffith, associate professor of the practice of
theology, and Thomas Groome, professor of theology and religious education, both
of Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry.
November 2 » New Evangelization for Today’s Parish
A workshop with David B. Couturier, O.F.M. Cap., director of pastoral planning for
the Archdiocese of Boston, and Jane E. Regan, associate professor of theology and
religious education, School of Theology and Ministry.
For details of these and other events, consult the Church in the 21st Century
Center’s website at www.bc.edu/church21.

44 Under age

Waiting for Yeats
47 House proud

No place for the undecided
49 Someone on TV Uses the

Phrase, ‘The Soul’s Smile’
A poem

photograph: Courtesy of Joon Park

From the 2012 senior project exhibition

con te nt s

End
Notes
In his senior year, Joon Park ’12 created more than 300 ceramic pieces—including
this one nearly five feet tall—for the two-semester independent project required of
all studio art majors. This sculpture, notes Park, derives from the moon-jar shape
produced during Korea’s Chosun (Joseon) dynasty (1392–1910) and is an amalgam
of clay, cement, paint, and gold leaf. The title, NEO GU RI, refers to a popular South
Korean brand of noodles. Park will study ceramic arts at Harvard in the fall.

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

43

W.B. Yeats at 20, in a portrait painted by his father, John Butler Yeats.

under age
By Fintan O’Toole
Waiting for Yeats

Boston College’s John J. Burns Library recently published online (and
for the first time anywhere) William Butler Yeats’s first play—Love
and Death, penned in adolescence. The little-known manuscript was
tucked in a box of letters and other paper memorabilia acquired by
the University from Michael Yeats, the author’s son, and its publication
prompted these words by a noted Irish essayist:

T

here’s a case to be made that anything most
authors wrote before the age of 25 should be burned.
So the question has to be asked: Why should we preserve, and
publicize, this play Love and Death, which William Butler Yeats
scrawled into five smallish notebooks in 1884, when he was 18?
There are good reasons why the play was never published or produced. It is not a lost masterpiece.

44

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Juvenilia can be looked at in two ways. The first is reductive.
Youthful scribblings reduce the writer, show his feet of clay, his
thought processes naked and raw. But you can also see such work
as a point of departure, leading to a necessary self-invention. Love
and Death helps us to understand how heroic an act that selfcreation was in Yeats’s case.
Most of us are not geniuses, and so we like to imagine that it’s
not our fault, that geniuses are born and not made. And that does
happen. Arthur Rimbaud did all of his poetic work by the age of 19
and had nothing left to say. Keats died at 25, leaving a canon that
remains extraordinarily radiant.
More often, however, geniuses have to make themselves. And
they have to do it the hard way, gradually. This is, at first reading,
why Love and Death holds our attention. We can’t take in a work
like this innocently—as if we don’t know that it was written by a

teenager who will become one of the great poets of the English
language. But if we try to look only at the work, what we find is still
moving: W.B. Yeats does not yet exist.
Yeats summarized Love and Death decades later in his Reveries
over Childhood and Youth (1915): “It’s a long play on a fable suggested by one of my father’s early designs. A king’s daughter
[Ginevra] loves a god seen in the luminous sky above her garden
in childhood, and to be worthy of him, and put away mortality, becomes without pity and commits crimes, and at last, having
made her way to the throne by murder, awaits [his coming] among
her courtiers. One by one, they become chilly and drop dead, for,
unseen by all but her, her god is walking through the hall. At last,
he is at her throne’s foot, and she, her mind in the garden once
again, dies babbling like a child.” Yeats’s summary leaves out a
convoluted subplot that makes Miss Prism’s three-volume novel
in The Importance of Being Earnest seem as snappy as an episode of
The Wire.
Love and Death is all serpentine narrative, artificial vocabulary,
and feverish borrowings (from Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, Keats, William Morris and the pre-Raphaelites, and others), and it reads like a drama written by a person uninterested in
people. It’s the product of days and nights alone in the bedroom
and study.
And yet, a reader can glimpse a writer who is drawing from his
literary influences the ability to inhabit a forceful linguistic rhythm.
In retrospect, not in context, it is possible to hear the great poet in
the making:
I see the company of timid ghosts
At evening also when the sun is low
Each with its finger to its lips goes by
Poor wild unutterable mysteries.

yeats extracted one poem from the play, a poem
called “Love and Death,” which in 1885 became one of the first he
published:
Go ask the springing flowers,
And the flowing air above,
What are the twin-born waters,
And they’ll answer Death and Love.

What is most poignant about the play, however, is not these
moments of fluency, but other, long, wearying moments, when,
working in the stony soil of adolescence, Yeats labors over images
he doesn’t know what to do with yet. To a remarkable degree,
certain images that will be important to Yeats’s later work were
already in his head at 18. There is a haunting sense of continuity
when you come across these and think, my God, they will be with
him all his life. Two brothers in Love and Death, one of whom is
mortal and the other immortal, serve to foreshadow, as the late
scholar Richard Ellmann put it, Yeats’s “later theory of the divided
or double self.” Images of a big house (home to quiet gentility) and
of a roofless tower (locus of wildness, violence, and the withstanding of violence) where “forever whirls the wind”—will also run
through his work. As an adult, Yeats will idealize Coole Park, the
big house of his friend and patron Lady Gregory, and choose to
live in Thoor Ballylee, a 16th-century tower.
Perhaps the trope from the play that will have the most currency in Yeats’s later work is what has been called elsewhere Liebestod,
the fusion of love and death. This is not at all a Yeatsian invention.
It came to Yeats through an English tradition—the slightly feverish, sickly, pre-Raphaelite imaginings of Swinburne and Rossetti,
and Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” a poem Yeats would
later directly echo. The convention ranges in its themes from the
male poetic love for a dead woman (Dante) to the lovers dying,

Yeats’s unimpressive first play, in five notebooks.

photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

45

like Romeo and Juliet, in each other’s arms. It is everywhere in the
popular culture of the 19th century, including in song (“Barbara
Allen”). In compositions known as murder ballads the undertones
can be sadistic (young man seduces woman, then, because she
struggles, he murders her violently).
Particularly after World War I—particularly in reaction to
World War I—Sigmund Freud took the Romantics’ coupling of
love and death and tendered it as eros and thanatos, the love instinct
and the death instinct, as a way of trying to understand human
behavior. Yeats’s great achievement as a writer is nearly the same
as Freud’s—the transformation of a 19th-century aesthetic, in
which he grew up, into a 20th-century one. In him, the Liebestod
survived and changed, bridging the Victorian sensibility and the
modernist view. He was able, eventually, to take it out of its sickly
sweetness into the tough beauty of, for example, Deirdre’s farewell
to her lover Naoise in the eponymous play Deirdre (1907): “Bend
and kiss me now/ For it may be the last before our death./ And
when that’s over we’ll be different;/ Imperishable things, a cloud
or a fire./ And I know nothing but this body, nothing/ But that old
vehement, bewildering kiss.”
The love and death theme is not entirely a male trope, but it
is primarily a male adolescent fantasy. It sublimates a concern
known well to teenage boys: the unavailability of a desired woman,
indeed, sometimes, of any woman at all. It freezes eros in youth and
purity. And it has the great attraction of fixing erotic passion while
short-circuiting the messy business to which eros leads: living with
someone, rearing children, and growing old.
Yeats would engage the love-death theme over the course of
his creative life. It would become an adult fantasy that, in some
later poems, he would take very far indeed, as in “He Wishes His
Beloved Were Dead” (1899):
Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast;
And you would murmur tender words,
Forgiving me, because you were dead . . .

Yeats liked to imagine his beloved Maud Gonne—actress,
muse, founder of the nationalistic Daughters of Ireland, who
rebuffed him and married another man—as being dead. He wrote
a poem called “A Dream of Death” in 1893 depicting Gonne in
her coffin (“And they had nailed the boards above her face”), and
he sent it to her.
As Yeats evolves from being a rather gauche 18-year-old poet
to being a great modernist over the course of 25 years, you might
expect he would find new themes. What Love and Death reveals is
that this isn’t what happens with Yeats. The images of contrasting
buildings, the Liebestod, the divided self—these remained with him.
Among them they would account for a great deal of his work. For
Yeats, the task would be finding the contexts in which those images
could resonate.
And so this question: What experiences made Yeats a great
poet? What elements are missing from Love and Death that will
later live in his poetry?
I would suggest that the first missing element is his love affair

46

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

with Maud Gonne. If he hadn’t met her in London in 1889, if she
hadn’t refused him (repeatedly) and married John MacBride in
1903, if she hadn’t existed, Yeats would have had to invent her. In
a sense, that’s what he did in his first play. He invented a doomed
love that cannot be fulfilled except in death. Those later, spooky
poems about her death while she was still alive have power because
they’re about something real. They’re not literary tropes that he
borrowed from books.
The second experience that changed him was theater. Very
often, those who love Yeats’s poetry tend to tolerate his work in
theater—as if, well, he had to be doing something when he wasn’t
writing poems. Reading Love and Death is a reminder that the
experience of theater, of forming language to hold its own on the
stage, changed Yeats as a poet. You can see in Love and Death, in
which he’s trying to write for the theater and can’t, how much this
inability imprisons his poetry. If Lady Gregory—cofounder of the
Abbey Theatre, transcriber of Irish legends—hadn’t urged Yeats
into theater, compelling him to write language that functioned,
Yeats might have become no more than the minor pre-Raphaelite
he once seemed destined to be.
The third absence in Love and Death is perhaps the most crucial
of all: It is Ireland. The only Irish stamp on the manuscript of this
play is the name and mark of the stationer on the inside cover of
the notebooks (“W. Carson, 51 Grafton St., corner of Stephen’s
Green, Dublin”). The play’s literary influences and cadences are in
the English tradition. Not that Yeats didn’t know he was Irish; but
he didn’t know he was Irish as a poet.
In Love and Death, the teenage Yeats is desperately trying to
write poetry that has mythic lift. But he hasn’t yet identified a
way that doesn’t sound derivative, fey, and artificial. He hasn’t
discovered the mythic Iron Age Irish hero Cuchulain, who will
provide him with an endless source of dramatic narrative and
poetic imagery. He hasn’t embraced the Irish mythology that will
boost his aesthetic yearnings up onto the high wire, making them
dangerous, making them political, and drawing resonance from
their place in a revolutionary cultural movement. The question he
would ask after the 1916 Rising—“What stalked through the Post
Office?” (the answer being the spirit of Cuchulain)— has not yet
occurred to him.
With the shift from Ginevra to Cuchulain, Yeats will go from
staking nothing on his poems to staking everything. And that will
do wonders for his imagination and his language.
I’ve long understood that Yeats, the later Yeats, did an enormous amount for Ireland, and brought honor to our country.
Reading Love and Death, I’m reminded that Ireland did quite a lot
for Yeats, too. n
Fintan O’Toole is a columnist and theater and literary critic for the Irish
Times. His books include Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption
Sank the Celtic Tiger (2009) and Shakespeare Is Hard but So Is Life: A
Radical Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy (2002). His essay here is drawn
from a talk he gave in the Burns Library on April 23, “Yeats’s Love and
Death: A Writer’s Beginning.”
Fintan O’Toole’s complete talk on Love and Death, and the
manuscript penned in Yeats’s hand, may be viewed via Full
Story at www.bc.edu/bcm

Photograph by Shellburne Thurber, part of House: Charged Space, a McMullen Museum exhibition in 2001.

House proud
By Matthew Batt
No place for the undecided

R

enting, like long-term dating or the decision
to stretch out graduate school, is at once pathetic and
comforting. It announces to the world simultaneously that you
aspire to grow up and move out of your childhood bedroom and
that you are not yet ready to be on your own.
My wife, Jenae (rhymes with Renée), and I decide to look for a
place to buy, and in Salt Lake City, the best neighborhood we can
afford is Sugar House. But the only way we can live here is to fix the
house up ourselves. And so we do, despite having no experience or
any other reason to believe we can.
We tear out the carpet, imagining at any time we might come
across hypodermic needles, charred spoons, or crack vials, and we
sand and refinish the old maple floors. We tear down a hideous

photograph: Shellburne Thurber/Courtesy of Barbara Krakow Gallery

shack and put up a hammock. We tear off fake wood and refinish
the kitchen cabinets to look like what we would have bought new.
Then we turn to the kitchen floor, where we will peel up seven
layers of linoleum and put down slate. Only two kinds of slate are
readily available: really expensive and really cheap. We place an
order for the cheap stuff.
when the truck arrives with our materials, i realize the depth of our folly. It is a tractor-trailer equipped with a forklift. On the flatbed, all shrink-wrapped with BATT written on it in
red grease marker, sits a huge lump of boxes, subflooring, and bags
of thinset (a flexible, quick-drying mortar). I was expecting a few
boxes of tiles and a little stack of drywall-like backerboard—noth-

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

47

ing more than would fill the back of my old Land Cruiser. The load
on this semi would demolish my truck. The tile alone, we are told,
weighs more than 2,000 pounds.
To install the tile, we have to yank up the old flooring. The
books we have suggest it will be fairly easy work—just take a
spreading shovel and scoop it on up. It is not the job I imagined.
The vinyl is glued to itself in the most onerous ways. A big sheet
will come off with a tug, but then we spend 45 minutes peeling
away a section the size of a ham sandwich. While I am hacking one
stubborn piece to smithereens with a box cutter, Jenae tells me to
look up.
The light in the kitchen glitters with linoleum motes. “Pretty,”
I say. “Wonder what makes the air shimmy like that.” There is a
pause. Even the linoleum stops shining for a second.
“There’s no asbestos in this stuff, is there?” Jenae asks. I say I
don’t want to know and just keep at it.

they came from the quarry. The sides are cut so they’re uniform,
and the bottom is milled so that its surface will take the thinset and
dry without air pockets, which could cause a tile to crack over time.
In order to successfully install a slate floor—at least according to
the perfectionist definition of it—you have to not only lay the tiles
out according to (a) the line of sight along which you’ll most often
look at the floor once the tiles are down and (b) the overall impression given the slight variation in color from tile to tile, but also (c)
the unique surface texture of each tile. In other words, we—make
that Jenae—will try to orient the tiles geographically, chromatically, and topographically.
While I set up the saw and hold what I hope will not be the last
cigarette between pre-diamond-bladed fingertips, Jenae lays out
the floor. She washes each tile with a wet rag so she can better see
and understand whatever lessons it has to teach, gauge its ability
to fit into the larger community of tiles already down, and either
place it in accordance with her
principles or toss it outside for
me to practice my cuts.
I fill a bucket with water, set
up the stand, gingerly position
the saw, and prepare to plug it in.
I know full well that folks with
less supposed education than I
have operate these menaces year
in and year out and wind up with
just as many toes, fingers, and
noses as they started with, but
I am not prepared to chalk anything up to a learning experience. I double-, triple-, and—what
the hell—sextuple-check to make sure I am not suddenly wearing
dangly jewelry, a ponytail, or necktie that can get wound up in the
saw and reel my face into the blade like an about-to-be-spiral-cut
ham. I don my shop-teacher safety glasses, hold my breath, and flip
the switch. With an industrial scream, gritty liquid sprays my face.
The saw is so loud I can’t be sure that something hasn’t already
been severed. I hit the switch and check my fingers, to confirm
that what’s spraying is water. With that clarification, I go about
my ritual of enumeration, turn the saw back on, and proceed to
transform a tile hewn from a multibillion-year-old rock into little
Lincoln Logs of slate.
How like a child, how like a god.

“Don’t put your hand under the blade when it’s
running,” the clerk at Home Depot says helpfully.
“Or in the bucket of water when it’s on.”
Bucket of water?
Finally we get down to the subfloor: a layer of plywood on top
of the joists. Because we’re putting down the mass equivalent of
a Nash Rambler in slate tiles, we need to gird things so we don’t
end up with a two-story basement kitchen. This is surprisingly
quick work. Take a few four-by-eight sheets of three-quarter-inch
plywood, and before you know it you’ve got a new, solid floor. Add
to that a layer of backer board—essentially a thin board of cement
woven with fiberglass—and the floor is prepped for tile.
In the space of a day, we have torn out an old floor—or seven—
and put down two new layers of subflooring. We are doing the job
fast, and we are doing it right.
and then we rent the diamond-bladed masonry saw.
I am no longer feeling quite so jaunty. After all, you don’t have
to be a master of logic or physics to realize that that which can cut
through rock can also blithely make its way through bone.
“Don’t put your hand under the blade when it’s running,” the
clerk at Home Depot says helpfully. “Or in the bucket of water
when it’s on.”
“Bucket of water?”
All I see is a portable tray and a table saw.
“BYO bucket,” he says. “For the water. Gotta keep the blade
wet or it’ll seize right up and, you know, fly off or something.”
A blade that is tipped with diamonds. Has potential to fly off. I
am taking careful notes.
One reason the slate we bought is so cheap is that it’s only partially finished. The tops of the tiles have been left more or less as

48

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

finally it’s time to mortar the tile to the floor.
I get a bag of the thinset, read the instructions, and whip up a batch
to the consistency of cake frosting.
For a moment Jenae and I kneel on the backer board, the ancient
tools of masons in our hands. I think about saying something to
commemorate the occasion. Maybe we should write something
sweet and sassy on the subfloor. After all, unless things go exponentially wrong, nobody will ever see it again. But we don’t want to
jinx things, so, without fanfare, Jenae dips her trowel in the bucket,
back-butters some thinset on the first tile, slaps some more on the
floor, trowels it as if she’s combing the wet hair of a monstrous
child, and eases the tile into place.
“Good job, baby,” I say. “You just rocked.”

She looks at me and then regards the first tile suspiciously. She
lays the second tile in the same fashion, but it sits a good half-inch
higher than the first.
“Maybe it’ll settle,” I say. “Let’s keep going and we’ll see what
happens.”
A flat, incredulous look from Jenae. She butters up another tile,
slaps more thinset on the floor, puts the tile down, and voilà! Now
we have three different tiles at three different heights.
Jenae repeats the process with two more tiles, with similar
results. The difference in height is never more than three-quarters
of an inch, but that will be awkward to navigate in dress shoes, if
not bare feet.
With what I would call fury, Jenae claws up the five tiles and
turns them on their backs like so many hopeless turtles. The tiles in
question have dramatically different amounts of thinset on them,
but which amount is correct, there’s no telling.
We decide to use more thinset on the floor and less on the
tiles. We scoop as much as we can with the trowel, use its edge to
comb the thinset into neat little rows, and set the tiles back into
place, jiggling them a bit and applying more force than I think we
should. The result is good. It looks as if everything is going to be
just fine.

Someone on TV Uses the Phrase, ‘The Soul’s Smile,’
by Robert Cording
and I’m wondering just how soulful

so far beyond our chatter it seems you’ve learned

it might be if we could see it—

the alchemy of creating something wonderful

a flash of teeth, white (not whitened),

out of anger and frustration. Or maybe

like a choir of angels singing I’m A Soul Man?

I just wanted you to be our Prospero,

But just as I’m having my superior laugh,

your comic vision of life returning the world,

your white-haired, godly face barges in,

same as always, but seen with new eyes

and here you are, dying all over again in my mind.

and a semblance of order never glimpsed before.

It’s an end of the week late afternoon

I don’t know. But, standing there, complaining

and a few of us who have come

and joking to cover our pain, the slow surge

to the hospital are caught up in the usual

of your smile took us all in;

meaningless politics of the school

and, while nothing in it contained a message

where we all teach, bitching about

from another world, I knew right then and there

an impotent administration, and the new

how much I needed to let go of

evaluative tools of colleges gone corporate,

in order to say, as you did, so gently

when, at last, we look over at you

and without the slightest hint of hurry,

who are dying in pain, and you’re just smiling,

that you needed to lie down now and sleep.

Robert Cording, Ph.D.’77, is the Barrett Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross and the author, most recently, of
Walking with Ruskin: Poems (2010).

s um m e r 2012 v b c m

49

Inquiring
Minds

Turf wars
By William Bole
When the states were in charge of immigration

L

ong enshrined as a federal prerogative, immigration control
in the United States has recently been marked by jurisdictional struggles between state and national authorities. Last
June’s Supreme Court decision to strike down parts of a restrictive
Arizona statute is one high-profile example. During the first hundred years, however, state governments were largely in control of
U.S. immigration.
Only in 1882, with the passage of the landmark Immigration
Act, did Congress lay claim to a general, peacetime interest in overseeing entry into the country. And
even then, the U.S. Treasury, short
on manpower and infrastructure,
paid state officials to enforce the federal law and quietly allowed states to
keep in place their own, tougher policies. From 1882 until 1891, when a
new Immigration Act provided for
the federal government’s complete
control, supervising immigration
was a joint project of U.S. and state
authorities.
So writes Hidetaka Hirota, Ph.D.
’12, in his dissertation-based essay,
“The Moment of Transition: State
Officials, the Federal Government,
and the Formation of American
Immigration Policy,” which won the
2012 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award
of the Organization of American
Historians for the best essay in
American history by a graduate student. Hirota, a Japanese citizen with
a B.A. from Jesuit-sponsored Sophia
University, in Tokyo, will be staying
on as a postdoctoral fellow at Boston
College this fall; a longer version of his essay will appear in a future
issue of the Journal of American History.
According to Hirota, U.S. histories often overlook the extent to
which the Atlantic seaboard states—New York and Massachusetts,
in particular—laid the groundwork for national immigration legislation. Since the colonial era, both states had required inbound
shipmasters to pay “head money” for any passenger who posed a
risk of washing up in a publicly supported almshouse. Of particular
concern were “lunatic, idiot, maimed, aged, or infirm” passengers,

according to an 1837 Massachusetts law that called for a thousanddollar bond for any questionable individual. In 1847, New York
created a statewide immigration control board; Massachusetts
followed four years later with its own agency to address “alien passengers and foreign paupers.”
It was contention over “head money” that delivered the first
blows to state immigration systems, according to Hirota. Shippers
argued against the practice, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1876
that only Congress had the power to impose such charges and
thus regulate foreign commerce. States
responded by pushing successfully for
what became the 1882 law, which was
modeled on their statutes.
Hirota chronicles the extent to
which British authorities tested the
U.S. immigration system—emptying
Irish poorhouses and, between 1883
and 1884 alone, giving 23,536 of
their wards tickets to America, with
what they hoped was sufficient pocket
change to slip through the enforcement
nets. As Hirota writes, New York and
Massachusetts not only barred such socalled undesirables from entry. They
also deported immigrants who became
public charges while living in this country (including some who had become
U.S. citizens), which exceeded the 1882
law. The federal law had provisions for
returning criminal immigrants to their
country of origin; indigents, however,
could only be excluded at the gates, “not
deported,” Hirota says. Massachusetts
had been deporting “alien paupers
[from its] almshouses and lunatics hospitals” throughout the 19th century, expelling 8,000 people to
Ireland, England, and Canada, as well as to other American states,
between 1876 and 1878, for example.
The state-federal partnership dissolved with the 1891
Immigration Act, which completely federalized immigration. In
that law, among other provisions, Congress chose to adopt the
states’ view that indigent immigrants should be deportable. In so
doing, and for a time, Washington brought federal immigration
law into close alignment with practices honed by the states.

New York and
Massachusetts not only
barred so-called undesirables
from entering the country.
They also deported
immigrants who became
public charges, including
some who had become
U.S. citizens.

80

bcm v summ er 2 0 12

Works &
Days

Allocca, on the roof of Google’s New York City office.

Trendspotter
By Nicole Estvanik Taylor
YouTube’s Kevin Allocca ’06

photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert

Every day, contributors to YouTube
upload 70-plus hours of new material per
minute; in the span of 24 hours, visitors
to the website view 4 billion videos. Kevin
Allocca scrutinizes this activity. He is
YouTube’s trends manager—hired for the
new position in 2010 by Google, which
owns the site, with the mandate to, as he
puts it, “make sense of it all.”
Allocca’s first major project was
launching youtube.com/trends, a “what’s
hot” miscellany for which he blogs conversationally on topics such as “Top 10
Commencement Videos of 2012” and
“How Many Happy Birthday Videos Are
Posted Each Day?” (“Over 2,000,” he
says.) The site also contains public versions of feeds and filters he has developed
with Google’s engineers to sift through
YouTube’s store of usage data. Allocca
spends a few hours each day and evening
tracking down what he calls “cultural phenomena”—which videos are most viewed?
Shared? Parodied? What if you sort by
topic, age, gender, geography? He is fascinated by the input from countries recently
added to YouTube’s domain. “One of
my favorite things to do,” he says, is “to
ask what’s the big music video today” in
Ghana or Peru or Malaysia.
Allocca works mostly at Google’s

block-long, 15-story office in Manhattan’s
Chelsea district, where employees cruise
the hallways on scooters. He also manages
a California-based team of four “social
media and programming coordinators”
who chat online with YouTube’s 61-million Facebook followers and tweet links
to videos (e.g., “Meet the proud owner of
America’s smallest apartment”).
Journalists and academics doing
research about YouTube—or about Syrian
unrest, say, or the Japanese tsunami—seek
out Allocca. And, increasingly, he’s tapped
for speaking engagements. His TED talk
on why videos go viral has garnered a quarter-million YouTube views since February.
With a double major in communication
and film studies, Allocca moved to New
York after graduation, aiming to write TV
comedy. But an HTML course he took as
a lark steered him toward the Huffington
Post—where he generated satirical text and
video (“if you had a good idea and the time
to do it, they’d post just about anything”)—
and later to editing the widely read TV
news industry blog at Mediabistro.com.
“When I started college,” he marvels,
“none of the jobs I’ve had existed.”
Nicole Estvanik Taylor ’01 is managing editor
of American Theatre magazine.

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Above: The Boston College men’s hockey team and head coach Jerry York (center) celebrate their third national championship in five years, on the ice in Tampa, Florida.
Photograph: AP Photo/Mike Carlson